My Mac is privileged to present the best from As the Apple Turns, a Macintosh news and insight website presented in the style of a continuing saga. But culling the best of Jack Miller is no easy task, and we wish we could reprint them all. While we can't do that, we are at least able to choose a small sampling of his work and present them here as they appeared on his website. Enjoy the ongoing Mac soap opera, and when you get a chance, be sure to check out his website for your daily dose of drama! http://www.infoxczar.com/atat

That Wacky Netscape (10/25/99)

Just because Thanksgiving's still a month away doesn't mean that we can't be in a grateful sort of mood. We're thankful for lots of things, actually-- candy-colored Macs, Tuesday night on the WB, and eight-pound catering packs of Tater Tots, to name a few. And of course we're thankful for Apple Computer and the mercurial Steve Jobs for always keeping things, er, interesting enough to pull in the viewers. But more than anything else, we're thankful that even when things are slow in the world of Apple, we've got a considerate and thoughtful viewer base who can entertain us in return. It's a sort of karmic Wheel of Fun, or something.

Case in point: faithful viewer Galen Rutledge, who pointed out a fun fact we'd yet to encounter on our own. Those of you for whom Netscape is your "browser of choice" can try this at home. You know that in recent Netscape browsers you can type a series of words into the URL field and Netscape will perform an Internet search on those words, right? So if, for example, you enter "cat hair salad" and press return, you get a Search Results page listing such sites as The Bad Kitty List, Part 1. It's kind of a neat time-saving feature, though getting Netscape to search that way using a different search engine is a bit tricky.

Anyway, Galen told us to try entering "more evil than satan himself" and seeing what happens. Heck, we're always up for a giggle or two, so we complied, and what do you suppose the very first listing was? Microsoft's homepage. Whether you find this surprising or merely obvious depends on your state of mind, we suppose. The more reasonable types among you will assume that this is merely a Netscapian joke, but the rest of us just figure that the Google search engine that Netscape uses is uncannily insightful. Just try entering "home planet, steve jobs" to see that Google is in on the big secret: Apple Computer isn't actually located in Cupertino, as some would have you believe-- it's a planet unto itself, from which the Mighty Steve hails. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

The Voodoo Curse (10/25/99)

Just when you thought the Clone Wars were long forgotten, up pops another reminder of the bloody corporate carnage that ensued when Steve Jobs retook Apple's helm. At the time, Apple was in dire financial straits, and a mishandled and ill-conceived Mac OS licensing program wasn't helping matters any; instead of making a few hundred bucks by selling a Mac, Apple was making about fifty bucks when the same customer bought a faster, cheaper Mac clone instead. So Steve made the tough (and, at the time, wildly unpopular) decision to end the Clone Era. The casualties were enormous. Motorola lost millions. Power Computing tried to shift to the Wintel space and died a horrible death. Umax fell back on its other business, but wrote off enormous losses due to the cancellation of cloning. Mayhem abounded.

Mactell, though, who was one of the smaller clonemakers, seemed to be able to transform into a fairly successful vendor of all kinds of Mac-related goodies-- graphics cards, processor upgrades, input devices, storage peripherals, and the like. Their web site lists a slew of exciting new products, and we figured Mactell managed to escape the Clone Wars, damaged but not disabled. So we were bummed to discover a Mactell press release announcing that the company is finally shutting its doors for good. The reason given? "Mactell has been attempting to work its way out of the problem created when Apple Computer, Inc. made the decision to discontinue the licensing of the Macintosh operating system... in August of 1997." Apparently the company's operating losses were substantial, and Mactell's debts are too high for them to continue doing business. Chalk up another casualty to the Clone Wars; Mactell managed to hang on for a couple of years, but finally gave up the ghost.

Then again, there's another factor to this whole equation; Mactell's demise may in fact be due less to the Clone Wars and more to what we call the Voodoo Curse. Gamers among you know that 3dfx makes a series of 3D accelerator chips called the Voodoo. Perhaps no one's noticed, but any company that tries to bring the power of the Voodoo chip to the Macintosh market winds up going under. First there was Techworks and their Voodoo 1-based Power3D; Techworks subsequently got bought out by a large company who ditched the Mac market, and the Power3D was gone. Then MicroConversions tried to bring us the Voodoo 2, but production problems, sky-high prices, and a badly botched rollout closed the company down. And now there's Mactell, who was poised to deliver the first Mac-specific Voodoo 3 card, the "EvilEye"-- dead before they could deliver. Coincidence? Hardly. Let's just hope that when the Voodoo 4 ships, whatever foolhardy Mac company that tries to deliver it fares better than its predecessors...

He's Baaa-aaack... (10/25/99)

Deep down, some part of you just knew it was coming: another "press release" from our buddy Hanoch Shalit. Hanoch, as you no doubt recall, is the brains behind Imatec, the company whose business plan appears to involve suing large companies for obscene amounts of money in hopes of generating an actual revenue stream in one of three ways: 1) a quick settlement, because big companies might not want to risk even the slightest chance of losing ridiculous sums of cash; 2) an actual courtroom win, which not only is slightly more likely than winning the lottery, but also has a much higher payoff; or 3) by driving up its own piddly stock price through the constant and unrelenting issuance of press releases to remind potential investors that, hey, they may not have a product, but they've got a doozy of a lawsuit. While the company doesn't actually make anything (their web site states that Imatec is "not a manufacturer or supplier of commercial imaging products, but develops its technology to the prototype stage for transfer under license"), its big shot at fortune would seem to be its $1.1 billion lawsuit against Apple for alleged patent infringement in the color management technology known as ColorSync. Hey, come on... is it really that much more crazy than the business plans of some of these "Internet companies"?

And so, just as faithful viewer Bruce Beighley predicted, copies of Mac OS 9 hit the shelves Saturday-- and Hanoch was flapping his gums in yet another press release by 8:30 on Monday morning, just before the markets opened. What a coincidence. By now you can probably recite the content without even reading the text. Mac OS 9's ColorSync 3.0 continues a "pattern of infringement." Imatec's still suing Apple for eighty jillion dollars or something. Someday someone might give Imatec lots of money and they'll be a real company, so you should buy their stock. Hanoch makes the shares himself using nothing but a legal pad and a big box of crayons. Yadda yadda yadda. And this time, Hanoch actually seems to have drawn a bit of attention; CNET gave the issue a token mention.

Unfortunately for Hanoch, this time it looks like Wall Street responded to his latest press release with a deafening yawn-- at least, if Imatec's stock price is any indication. It didn't budge from its lofty height of seventy-five cents, ColorSync 3.0 or no ColorSync 3.0-- in fact, no shares appear to have changed hands. We don't pretend to know what that's about, but we do know this: Hanoch Shalit will one day be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under the categories "Most Press Releases Issued In One Lifetime" and "Lowest Press Release Signal-To-Noise Ratio." We're hearing whispers that Apple's legal department is also lobbying to gain him the coveted "Biggest Doodyhead" title as well, but that remains unconfirmed...

Always Check. ALWAYS. (10/20/99)

Yes, Virginia, there are iBooks available for the patient-- and they're even more available for the not-so-patient. We at AtAT can now say that a blood-relative has taken delivery of her brand-spanking-new Blueberry iBook, though if she hadn't gone down to CompUSA and rattled a few cages, she'd still be waiting. Here's the story in a nutshell: after countless crashes, excessive downtime, and other frustrating Wintel-style behavior on both her Compaq Presario at work and her husband's Packard Bell system at home, a couple of months ago my cousin actually put down a deposit on an iBook at CompUSA, sight unseen. (Actually, she'd seen one of the iBook brochures we picked up at Macworld Expo, but that's all-- and she's never used a Mac in her life.) The entire pre-order process was reportedly completely flummoxing to the sales staff, who had difficulty answering any questions about the amount of the deposit, whether the deposit guaranteed an iBook by a certain date, what kind of financing was available, etc. But after much consultation, head-scratching, and general befuddlement, the CompUSA staff was apparently able to book the pre-order and take my cousin's money.

Last Thursday night she gave us a call and vented her anger at CompUSA, since they had originally quoted her a late September delivery time and yet, as of the middle of October, she was still iBookless. I explained to her that the earthquake in Taiwan had shaken up an already rather late production schedule, but finding that the local Sears had two iBooks on the shelf wasn't helping matters any-- CompUSA already had her nonrefundable deposit.

So on Friday she walked into CompUSA to check on her order status in person, since her deposit guaranteed her a place in line as iBooks trickled in to fill pre-orders. Imagine her dismay to be told that, despite her $250 deposit, CompUSA could find no record of her pre-order. So while she'd been told she was one of the very first on the list when she placed the order, if she hadn't gone in to investigate, she wouldn't have gotten an iBook at all. Let's hear it for CompUSA's stunning level of competency, folks! (Yes, we know there are good CompUSAs out there-- and even some Mac-friendly ones. But stories like this "mysterious disappearing order" seem to be the rule, not the exception.)

Anyway, she got hold of the manager, who, to be fair, was entirely apologetic, admitted that the store screwed up, and even offered to sell my cousin the demo iBook right then and there. She declined, instead opting for her other choice-- a boost to the very top of the pre-order list and a phone call when the next iBook became available And so, five days later, she brought home the bright Blueberry addition to the family. It's a happy ending, overall (or a happy beginning, really, for a self-confessed computer illiterate just starting on the road to Macdom), though her one suggestion to Apple is to "get out of CompUSA because they don't know what the hell they're doing." Food for thought.

Jack Miller
jackm@infoXczar.com