Alas, the Apple team don't call me before their keynote at the show and tell me what they're planning on announcing. And if they did, well, I wouldn't write about it beforehand anyway, would I?

Actually, I'm writing this the day before the keynote address of the Macworld trade show in San Francisco, a day that traditionally is headlined by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, aka "his Steveness". In previous years he's introduced the Macbook Air, the Apple iPhone, the iPod, and various other amazing gadgets that have, in various ways, changed the face of computing.

This year, however, Steve shares that he's having some health issues and is going to skip the keynote, but Apple is still going to present some new stuff, products that by the time you read this, will be known, but on this side of the calendar, I can only guess at based on the best guesses of people writing on any of the many Apple rumor sites.

And that's what I want to write about, because if you've never joined the Cult of Apple, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Apple isn't just a company that produced computer and consumer electronics, it really is rather a cult and people who are "Mac faithful" often do feel they're superior to their Windows brethren.

This is so pronounced that it's not uncommon to hear about "Apple fanboys" and "fangirls", people that have Apple stickers on their cars, wear Mac or iPod-related t-shirts, own a few iPods and an iPhone and have at least one Mac laptop or another. It's not a brand, it's a lifestyle.

Nowhere, however, is this more pronounced than in the online world, where journalists who write anything at all negative or critical of Apple routinely have dozens or even hundreds of highly critical comments left, all boiling down to "how dare you criticize The Apple". Do people feel that way about Windows or Microsoft? Not even in Redmond.

If you want to read about what's coming up next for Apple, there are literally dozens of different Web sites you can follow, but a good Apple rumor can make it from crank blog to Wall Street Journal or New York Times in just a day or two sometimes, which is rather amazing. Start with Jon Gruber's DaringFireball.com, Arnold Kim's MacRumors.com and AppleInsider.com and you'll have plenty of the latest gossip to fill your heart.

But if that's not enough because you want to learn more about the cult, uh, oops, The Cult, then I suggest you check out Leander Kahney's CultOfMac.com as a good starting point. You can go further down the rabbit hole by checking out mactattoo to see some of the head shaving and body altering homages to Apple people have done. (the above photo is from that collection)

As for me, I have an Apple logo sticker on my car, a small collection of iPods, an iPhone and, yes, a Mac laptop. I've been part of the Mac world since 1985, I think I've joined the Cult somewhere along the way too. :-)