How many times have you walked through a Sears store and seen one lonely Mac awash in a sea of PC-compatibles? When you go over to pay a little attention to that neglected Mac, how often do you find that its mouse is missing, or it's permanently locked up at the At Ease password dialog, or worse yet, it's just running the Finder and has three System Folders? Well, according to MacNN Reality, Apple's not going to take it anymore. One of their sources reveals that rather than fight the losing battle to get Sears, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. to play fair, unless those retailers clean up their acts, Apple's going to take its ball and go home.

That's right, be prepared for the Macs to disappear from those chains who show no interest in selling Macs in the first place. Does that sound bad to you? Not to us. Sticking one nonfunctional Mac next to a slew of PC's doesn't constitute a sales strategy, and instead of selling Macs, it just reinforces the idea in consumers' minds that Apple is no longer capable of making boxes that anyone would want to buy. Betcha that the only Macs that Sears ever sells are sold to people who come in knowing which Mac they want to buy.

CompUSA has proven that just a little effort can sell a lot of Macs. At their stores outfitted with an Apple area, their sales of Macs jumped from just 3% of total sales to 14%. And that's with (unfortunately) hardly any salesperson support; we get constant reports from faithful viewers that they are unable to get any help when shopping in CompUSA for Mac equipment. Imagine what the numbers will be like when they actually get Mac-savvy sales help. (We at AtAT are particularly thrilled to hear that a new CompUSA is going to open in Cambridge, MA, just down the road from our headquarters; sounds like the Microcenter's going to have some real competition.) Anyway, our point is simply this: if a given retailer doesn't want to sell Macs, they simply shouldn't. Given CompUSA's success, it's plain to see that Sears' loss is CompUSA's gain.

While Microsoft seems determined to fight its domestic antitrust battles to the bitter end ("Give me monopoly or give me death!"), aReuters article reveals that they are smart enough not to fight a two-front war on different continents. When European Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert approached Microsoft with the fact that their bundling agreements with twenty-four European internet service providers contain clauses which "fly in the face of competition," instead of fighting on the beaches, etc., Microsoft backed off. The Commissioner says that Microsoft "seems to be prepared to offer in due time remedies" so that the case need not be pressed any further.

So is this a Microsoft who has seen the error of its ways, or just one who knows how to pick its battles? We at AtAT feel it's the latter. The war on the U.S. front is being fought to keep its fantastic edge over archenemy Netscape; losing a bundling deal with some European ISP's isn't going to make such a huge difference, since as long as every U.S. Wintel PC ships out with Internet Explorer preinstalled, Microsoft is virtually guaranteed to win the browser wars. (Apple isn't quite as neutral as Sweden in this fight; until next month's CD-ROM release of Mac OS 8.1, Apple installed Netscape Navigator as the default browser with its operating system software, but as part of the historic Apple-Microsoft Treaty of 1997, will now install MSIE as the standard. However, as AtAT Special Correspondent Dan Grams points out, Netscape is still on the 8.1 CD-ROM, and the end-user gets to choose in the end.)

The real question is, does Microsoft also know never to fight a land war in Asia? As it stands, right now they don't have to, as it's only the government of Japan who are currently investigating whether they should slap Microsoft with antitrust proceedings. Given their decision to cave when faced with the European threat, will Microsoft stick to its guns if Japan starts firing? Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, a quieter war between the cable companies and the phone companies is being waged for the next great high-speed home internet access technology. The front-runner has definitely been the cable modem, which allows downloads at ethernet speeds or thereabouts (though, at least with the implementations we've seen, uploads still take place at standard modem speeds). The latest news shows a new contender, though-- Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL. Wired News reports that those crazy kids over at Lucent have come up with a way to make DSL simpler for the phone companies to support.

DSL technology, which allows 7 Mbps speeds over standard copper telephone wire, has been around for some time now, but its implementation has been hindered by the past necessity of a phone-company installation at each user's home. Lucent's new version of "splitterless" DSL (which they are either calling WildWire or LiveWire; Wired seems to refer to it by both names over and over again) only requires that the customer buy a special modem, and that the phone company installs special switching equipment at its own central offices. Microsoft, Intel, and Compaq just announced an alliance to create a DSL standard with the majority of regional Bell operating companies in the U.S. With WildWire modems becoming available later this year and costing only $200-300, it seems very possible that in a year's time we could all be cruising along at 1.5 Mbps. That's less than a sixth of the speed of cable modems, but it's fifty times as fast as a 28.8 kbps connection-- and cable internet access isn't available in all, or even most, areas.

Before you get too excited, though, there still remains the little task of setting up a standard. Given how long it's taking to carve out a 56K standard, we're not holding our breath, but if WildWire can get fired up soon, the phone companies have a fighting chance in the home access wars.