Don't ask us how we missed this one (AtAT's experiencing a devastating confluence of old age and sleep deprivation these days), but it wasn't until we read this morning's Reality that we found the rumors at Apple Recon with the possible explanation for Steve Jobs' CNBC walkout. Apparently one of Recon's sources claims that Steve had been planning to drop the "interim" designation from his job title and assume the role of permanent CEO sometime before the end of the Expo.

If this were the case, then imagine the situation in which Steve found himself: Francis kept asking about the CEO issue. It became obvious that he wasn't going to let the subject drop. Finally he asked if Steve himself was going to take the job after all. Suddenly, Steve either says yes (which wrecks however he planned his announcement) or no (and is proven to be a liar a few days later). The only sensible thing to do in such a situation was to get up and walk away.

It's a pretty way-out rumor, even as far as Apple rumors go. Personally, it seems more likely to us that Jobs had simply said he wasn't going to discuss the CEO issue, CNBC ignored that statement, Bruce Francis was an irritating twit, and Steve doesn't suffer fools very gladly. Yes, Steve's behavior may have been just a little out of line, but he's never exactly been known for staying in line, now, has he? Just be thankful he didn't take a swing at the guy. ;-)

Last week's MacWorld Expo saw a frenzy of support for Microsoft from Mac users who are finally starting to see the fruits of increased Mac development efforts in Redmond. The unveiling of Office 98 for the Mac drew fond applause, and the long-awaited Mac version of Internet Explorer 4.0 started shipping a week ago, complete with its free email and news client, Outlook Express. Could it get any better than this?

Apparently, the unfortunate answer is "hell yes." Reports of Mac-IE4's bugginess have been flowing in for days, and we're apparently not alone in our observations: Today's MacFixit proclaims that "records are made to be broken," and that Mac-IE4 has "generated more reports within the first few days of its release" than they've ever gotten for any other application in the past; tales of crashes, freezes, unexpected quits, and "out of memory" messages abound. And a HotWired article just plain says that Mac-IE4 is "lame," citing its slowness, its lack of features available in the Windows version, and the way it "breaks" many pages that use dynamic HTML-- which should work just fine. Nor is Outlook Express a paragon of happy computing; in addition to being plagued by the same freezes and crashes as its web-browser counterpart, it contains a nasty (though incredibly entertaining) bug described on MacInTouch: if you create a contact entry with a company name but no first or last name, all email you send out will be cc'd to that address. Yeek!

And that's just the tip of the big, ugly iceberg. All we can say is, we sure hope that Office 98 is considerably less nightmarish than IE4. After a few years of getting nothing but dreck like Word 6.0, we honestly would like to welcome Microsoft back into the Mac applications fold with open arms. But they've got some cleaning to do first; who wants to hug someone with bugs all over them? Crawly...

Well, so far all the feedback we've gotten about the New York MacWorld Expo being named "Creative World" agree with us-- it's not a particularly clever name, and whoever thought it up should be tied down and beaten with the Creative Stick until he/she comes up with something wittier. But regardless, the Powers That Be are doing their damnedest to let the world know that the show this July is targeted squarely at the "content creation" half of Apple's core markets.

However, that spiffy new Creation Train may be headed for a nasty derailment. Everyone's favorite obfuscator Mac the Knife reports that Adobe, the company that most graphics professionals consider the center of the pixel-pushing universe, is "seriously considering" passing up the show, because its July date is too close to the Seybold Seminars. Oops! Guess IDG should have thought of that before they moved the show from August...

The Knife also reports that Adobe is currently trying to rustle up an eight-figure purse to hand over to Live Picture Inc., in exchange for rights to their Photoshop-competing graphics app. If that's true, then Adobe's reluctance to attend MacWorld Expo may also be about the money-- those tens of millions have to come from somewhere. So can "Creative World" succeed when even Adobe won't attend? Looks like it's up to the general Mac faithful to fill the halls. You can bet that AtAT will be there.