When Apple began filing lawsuits against some of the Mac rumor sites, you began to wonder if their days were numbered. I started to think what may daily online routine would be like if people were afraid to speculate about future iPods and Mac products fearing they might get it right and face the wrath of Apple. You could almost sense the chill in the air.

Yes, I’ve said many times that we don’t truck in rumors here and we don’t encourage developers and others to break confidentiality agreements. On the other hand, I have no qualms about indulging in speculation from time to time. Well I don’t reduce myself to consulting tea leaves or crystal balls, I like to examine trends and take them to their inevitable conclusions. Or inevitable from my point of view. But we all love gossip. Whether it’s a weekly entertainment magazine, a so-called supermarket tabloid, or just sitting back and chewing the fat, idle chatter is fun, so long as you don’t hurt someone of course.

Well, the actions against those rumor sites are still before the courts, and the way the legal system works, it may take years to resolve. One ruling is only as good as a decision from a higher court not to overturn it. I even began to consider how life would be without a rumor site to spice things up, especially when there’s not much important news in our tiny corner of the universe.

I shouldn’t have worried, of course. For a short time, it seemed as if the rumor sites were a little tentative in their approaches to the latest scuttlebutt about future stuff from Apple. Did they perhaps fear more legal skirmishing? Maybe not, because they’re still around, although they haven’t completely taken the gloves off yet. At the same time, they seem to have allies from unexpected quarters. After Apple’s lawsuits against some of these sites became big news in the mainstream media, it seemed as if some of them decided to get their feet wet.

Take, for example, the original revelation that Apple planned to switch to Intel processors. No, you didn’t hear it from your favorite Mac rumor site. Instead, it came from The Wall Street Journal, perhaps the most prestigious daily newspaper in the U.S. Imagine that! And Apple didn’t fire back with any legal threats. The story appeared, was picked up by other papers and, surprise, surprise, was actually confirmed by Steve Jobs at his WWDC keynote just a few days later.

Now to be fair, I don’t think anyone broke a nondisclosure agreement to feed the story to the venerable WSJ. In fact, I very much believe in the conspiracy theory that the story was officially sanctioned by Apple to draw attention to what is normally just a series of work sessions for Mac developers. Sure, Apple does make key product announcements during the WWDC, such as a new version of Mac OS X, but this was the biggest news yet, and it got the world’s attention real fast.

But I’m not surprised over official leaks from Apple. Remember when the original “lamp base” iMac appeared? It made the cover of Time magazine. No, Time’s reporters didn’t ferret out the information by traditional investigative journalism techniques. Instead, this was an official story, doubtless actively solicited by Apple. The magazine got direct and exclusive access to Steve Jobs and the story was so important from a marketing point of view that Apple even advanced the product’s introduction by one day to coincide with the magazine’s official appearance on the newsstands. Ah, the power of the press! But pity those who, at the time, bought plane tickets to the Macworld Expo anticipating a Tuesday keynote and had to pay big fees to reschedule.

Now in the end, the iMac with the floating screen was something less than a smashing success, although it sold well for a time. On the other hand, you can’t fault Apple’s marketing push. Whether an officially approved rumor or an exclusive, when Apple calls an editor, they listen.

But what about those Mac rumor sites? Now that the mainstream press has gotten into the act, are their days numbered? Well, here’s another conspiracy theory. In the wake of reports about the impending arrival of a $500 Mac late last year, Apple deliberately decided to file those lawsuits before the Macworld Expo at which the new computer was expected to be announced. What was the result? Of course, the lawsuits hit the media worldwide and far more attention was drawn to the Steve Jobs keynote address.

So those little rumor sites not only had to go scurrying for legal assistance, they unwittingly became part of Apple’s marketing plan. After all, Apple didn’t have to file those lawsuits at that particular time, since the end result was simply to confirm that the new products described in the actions in question really existed. Of course one of those products, an audio “breakout” or interface box bearing the code name Asteroid, is still missing in action. Did Apple decide to give up on its plans in the wake of those leaks? Or is it readying a new round of legal actions or planned leaks when or if Asteroid is ready for release? I wonder.

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The news that a relatively small Arizona school system ditched textbooks in favor of iBooks may seem a curiosity, but when you actually get to look at the system in action, you come away incredibly impressed.

On Wednesday, I made a 140-mile trip to Empire High School in Vail, Arizona to see the fledgling system first-hand, and to say I came away impressed is an understatement. Within a complex of buildings that’s dusty from new construction lies one of the first educational systems to truly embrace the possibilities of the 21st century.

First, let me repeat what many of you know from the published reports. Every student at Empire gets an iBook that contains all their lesson materials, plus copies of Microsoft Office. There are no printed textbooks. They can take the iBooks home with them, and, of course, their parents are responsible for its care, although a low-cost insurance program helps reduce the costs in case the laptop is smashed to smithereens.

Unlike traditional textbooks, which are designed by committee and are often outdated, the Vail school system is regularly updating its instructional materials at Empire High School to take advantage of new technologies and information. Except for the presence of iBooks on each desk, including the teacher, classrooms like amazingly conventional. Network connections are all wireless, and there are 157 wireless access points located at strategic locations to keep signal strength high. There are also areas outside where students can congregate and compute. The network is managed by a handful of Apple Xserves.

System management is less complicated than it may seem at first glance. The IT people, headed by Matt Federoff, the Director of Technology, create custom user environments for students on disk images that are deployed on every iBook. Students are limited in their access to software, system features and, of course the Internet. They cannot, for example, install their own software, nor can they run AIM or iChat to goof off during class.

Despite being on the cutting edge, the staff also seemed conventional. I was taken on the “cook’s tour” by Federoff, and was granted interviews with the school principal, Cindy Lee, a teacher, a pair of students, and one of Federoff’s assistants. The students impressed me as bright, articulate, and my overall impression was one of quiet efficiency. The students I interviewed, by the way, had Windows PCs at home, and this was apparently their first exposure to the Mac OS. No, they haven’t committed to become switchers; at least not yet.

In all, the system has nearly 2,000 Macs around the district. Empire has 350 students, and that number is expected to double by next year. As you might expect, homework, from submission to grading, is handled online.

As you might expect, there have been minor bumps along the way. Despite the perception that most of today’s high schoolers have mastered most basic computer skills, teachers had to spend the early weeks training some in basic file management and organizing techniques. The network, by the way, is configured to automatically back up a student’s work, so in the event of a system break down, very little is lost.

Typical of Macs, system problems have been few. Some of the iBooks had to be “re-imaged,” meaning that their drives had to be erased and a new copy of the drive data had to be installed. The process reportedly takes a little over 12 minutes, and is a fairly trivial operation. In fact, I didn’t get the impression that the small IT staff was particularly overworked chasing down problems, unlike what you find in a typical Windows environment.

Clearly the world is watching. In addition to the media, Federoff said that he had been contacted by school systems around the world about the Vail district’s experiment in state-of-the-art education. He even receives calls from such PC makers as Dell and Gateway, but their conversations focus largely on selling boxes, not on enhancing the system’s educational tools. In contrast, Apple’s sales representative concentrates on the great things you can do with its computers.

So far, the project has been in operation for about a month, and everything, to quote the cliche, just works. If you want to learn more about this pioneering school system, and other examples of Apple’s “1 to 1 Learning” initiative, check out Apple’s education site. You also can hear many of the interviews I conducted during my visit on this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE.

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It’s tempting. We live in a world of instant analysis, so when something happens, expected or otherwise, you can bet there will be a thousand and one interpretations of the meaning of the event within the first five minutes. You aren’t supposed to just sit back and sort through the maze of facts and fiction for yourself, not when others are ready and waiting to tell you what to think.

And, sure enough, the online talking heads were busy as bees churning out speculation, reasoned and otherwise, about what really happened in the wake of the announcement that Apple was migrating to Intel processors. One commentator pronounced it a lame-brained move that would eventually result in the death of Apple Computer. Oh well, they’ve been saying that for years, and Apple still won’t take the hint, thank goodness.

Worse, the unfortunate assumption on the part of some of those commentators was that Apple must, of course, be lying somehow. They insisted that Steve Jobs simply became too much of a pain in the butt, so the folks at Freescale Semiconductor and IBM stopped listening to his demands for faster chips. Serves him right, they said. That IBM eventually announced new generations of lower power and dual-core versions of its 970 processor series, the processor family used in the iMac and Power Mac G5 line, surely indicated that it was all Apple’s fault. How could it be otherwise?

Others suggested that the sale of new Macs would stop dead in its tracks as soon as folks realized something much better was around the corner, even though that corner wouldn’t be reached for another year or two at best. After all, why should anyone buy a new computer now when you know there is something a lot better on the horizon?

Taking that logic to its obvious conclusion, of course, meant that you should never buy a new computer, because the one you buy, even if it just went on sale, is already obsolete in the scheme of things. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t buy a new TV, a new printer, a new scanner or a even a new car. Regardless of what you plan to buy, the manufacturer is already working on something better, so why settle for second best? Why indeed!

Well, the predictions that people would postpone plans to buy new Macs was, fortunately for Apple, largely unfulfilled. Sales remained at a pretty high clip through June. And reports from so-called industry analysts about summer sales show that the hot pace hasn’t cooled. Of course, to be fair to the fear-mongers, Apple won’t announce the real sales figures for the current quarter until the middle of October, so there’s plenty of time for the predictions of doom to be realized. After all, why do you really want Apple to succeed anyway? After all, Windows Vista is coming to your town by the end of 2006, so who needs the Mac OS anyway? Besides, isn’t the new version of Windows supposed to be far more immune to security leaks? Doesn’t it look more Mac like than ever? Why should you be forced to live with the original when you can always buy the imitation?

No, wait, by the time Windows Vista hits the streets, Microsoft will no doubt be designing its successor. Head for the hills! Hide your head in the sand! Progress will never stop! Why do we need progress anyway? Break out those black and white TVs and turn off the air conditioners!

Back to the real world, or what passes for real these days: This week, Intel is talking up its forthcoming processors and its plans to test Mac development tools. Sure enough, as Steve Jobs said to Mac developers in June, Intel is moving to new generations of powerful chips that have much lower power consumption. Imagine, for example, a thin and light PowerBook with dual core processors and a battery life of six hours or more, even when running full bore.

Although Apple will continue to keep its product plans close to the vest, you can bet that some of those new chips will find their way into the MacIntels of 2006 and 2007. At the same time, you can also bet that there will be new Macs with PowerPC inside before then. Apple is not going to sit back and watch its products become dusty before your eyes. You may even find something in those new products that’s tempting enough to convince you to buy now rather than later. In fact, the rumor sites are already gearing up to predict what Apple might introduce next month at the Apple Expo in Paris.

Maybe I should reserve my plane ticket now. No, not that. Airplanes are far too advanced. Are there any slow boats to Paris?

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