It was Sunday night, the 23rd of April and I was sleeping fitfully. I had just perused the rumor sites digging into the specifics of arcane patentry and wondered when all the pieces would fit together to form the wonder device of my dreams. This, perhaps, may be why I didn’t dream of a Neoton or an iTap but instead, when I finally got to sleep, my dream went like this.

I found myself walking down an old road that could have been some long forgotten section of Route 66. Grass was forcing it’s way through the brittle asphalt laying siege to what once was a vibrant, vital thoroughfare. The sun shone brightly upon the slightly overgrown embankments and fields beyond, but it wasn’t uncomfortably warm... you just wouldn’t want to be wearing black. I was on the left side of the road walking along the white line as a tightrope walker might, following wherever it might lead.

Every now and then, a shot would ring out.

Since I’d nothing better to do, and the dream would have been boring otherwise, I decided to walk towards the sound of the firearm. As I got closer, the shots seemed to slow until they stopped altogether. Perhaps they’ve spotted me and didn’t want to shoot me in the face. I pick up the pace and spy what I believe they’re aiming for, a fairly new road sign at a gentle rise in the road. It didn’t look to be more than a couple of months old and some vandal was popping shots into it like so much popcorn into a bored moviegoers mouth.

As I crested the hill, I came up from behind the sign and was able to see what road I traveled upon. However, the nomenclature was foreign to me. Instead of a red, white and blue emblem with large formal letters, or a smaller black and white square with the outline of a state on it, it instead seemed to simply display “4x”.

Just then, another shot rang out and the sign shuddered violently from the hit. The sound of metal hitting metal rang in my ears for a bit and I covered them and cowered down expecting another blast. It was then that I heard a human voice barely above the ringing in my ears. I removed my hands from my head to see if the shouting was,”stick ‘em up.” Instead, in a strangely familiar voice, I heard,”I was trying to get your attention!”

I looked forward down the slope to see a hand waving to me, beckoning me to come closer. Though the other hand held some form of firearm, I didn’t feel I was the target. I approached cautiously nonetheless. The figure was dressed in blue jeans and a black mock turtleneck and didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered by the bright sun.

I put out my hand to shake his outstretched hand. I nod towards the sign with a quizzical look as if to say,”What’s all this, then?” He replied,”It’s just an old sign. I’m going to replace it with this one here,” he motioned to a rounded square shaped piece of metal face down on the ground, “and was just taking care of this one first.” I completely understood since, as a kid, when given the opportunity to place discarded glass gingerly in a receptacle or to smash it to hear that wonderful sound, I chose the latter.

“What’s on the new sign?” I asked, pointing to the mysterious metal just behind him. “The new sign,” he replied lifting it but holding it faced away from me, “is what I wanted to show you”. With a flourish capable from only the finest of showmen, he spins the sign to let me see.

5x

He then handed me the gun and said, “Care to give it a try?” I accepted it, and promptly took a bite out of the barrel.

“Good huh?”

That’s when I woke up from the dream. Later in the day, I checked Apple’s website and saw that they’d just introduced the 17 inch MacBook Pro. On the product pages, where there was once a graphic stating the MacBook Pro as 4x faster, there was now one for 5x. So did my MacBook Pro suddenly get one “X” faster overnight? I mean, the 17 inch is no faster than my special order 15 inch. What sorcery is this? I could say that it was because the official shipping 15 inch was 2 Ghz and shipping 17 inch is 2.16, but is .16 worth a whole ‘nother X? How many X’s does that make the 1.83?

Unfortunately, to these questions I have no answers other than it appears that I may have gotten an X from somewhere.

Oh, and a battery life of 4.5 hours too, apparently....