Fill the snack bowls and load up your beverage helmet-- Apple's back in the Super Bowl. Or, at least, they're once again advertising during the Super Bowl (though we bet if you put Steve Jobs on the field, Mr. Reality Distortion Field would be able to persuade the other team that it was in their best interests to throw the game). It was common knowledge that Apple had purchased a commercial slot during the game, and Mac fans across the globe were anxiously awaiting the company's first Super Bowl ad since 1985. Then, disaster struck-- Advertising Age magazine reported that Apple was pulling out of the game, and had told Fox to find a buyer for their slot. There was no explanation for the change of heart, but the most common guess was that some product that Apple planned to unleash upon the world simply was too far behind schedule for the timing to work out. Whatever the reason, Apple was out, and the fans were crestfallen.

Then, a few days later, Apple suddenly issued a press release that reaffirmed their intention to show a commercial during the big game-- and it was to be the HAL 9000 ad, which touts the Mac's Y2K-compliance. You've probably seen it by now-- it was shown during the last Expo keynote, and has since been available in QuickTime format at Apple's web site. Interestingly enough, until the day of the press release, the ad was clearly described as an "Internet-only" ad that was not destined for a television broadcast. Now, however, there's a notice stating that "thousands of emails" begging Apple to broadcast the commercial persuaded them to show it during the Super Bowl.

We at AtAT are thrilled that Apple's decided to advertise after all. We're especially happy that they're showing the HAL ad-- mostly because we've already seen it, so we don't have to sit through the game to catch a new commercial; after all, we've got X-Files tapes to catch up on. But we're just a tad skeptical that Apple is showing HAL just because their fans begged them to do so. Our guess is that they planned some mega-huge commercial that either wasn't done in time, or pushed a product that's not yet ready for prime time. When things fell through, they tried to sell their slot, and perhaps couldn't find a buyer, at which point they decided to go ahead and air HAL. Whatever. In any case, it's nice to see Apple take a chance on broadcasting a commercial that might go over a few people's heads. We're sure that a hefty percentage of the 100 million Super Bowl viewers will recognize HAL 9000, but we can't help thinking that the ad is certainly written more for an Internet audience than for a football one.

So Steve Jobs didn't get named Time's Man of the Year, despite the campaign to push him up in the magazine's web site polls. Really, is anyone surprised? If the online poll were anything other than a cheap and effective ploy to pull more traffic to their site, then the Man of the Year would probably be a martyr, a wrestler, or Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf. The funny thing is, Mr. Jobs may have had a decent shot at the title if that whole White House scandal thing hadn't occurred. Talk about a soap opera! With all the free material overflowing from D.C., we were sorely tempted to rename the show "As the White House Turns" and change its whole direction. It's a testament to Steve that he kept things interesting enough that we never had to resort to cheap Presidential satire. Cheap Apple satire suits us just fine, thank you very much.

But even though Clinton and Starr edged Steve out for the whole Man of the Year thing, Steve's baby captured an analogous distinction from TIME Digital; the iMac is the official 1998 Machine of the Year. And really, what other machine had a chance at the title? The iMac was unveiled in early May, to everyone's complete surprise. Then followed three solid months of speculation, discussion, and debate about its startling differences. (We have a feeling that any computer released without a floppy drive would have been named Machine of the Year, even if it didn't look like a giant alien dinosaur egg.) August 15th finally arrived, and the buying frenzy commenced-- and when the smoke cleared at the end of the year, the iMac was the number one selling computer during the holiday quarter. Pretty good for a system manufactured by a beleaguered and dying company.

So congratulations to the Little Blue Wonder. Now that it's graduated to five fruit flavors, we're interested to see if the interest can last. One thing's for sure, though-- the iMac has made its mark on the landscape of computing history, and even if it were to fall off the sales charts tomorrow, it will be remembered and talked about decades from now. Steve must be proud of his digital progeny...

Is it just us, or is anyone else out there tired of waiting for QuickTime 4.0? (And we personally don't even need it!) It seems like it's been "just around the corner" for half a year now-- or, at least, the most important feature of QuickTime 4.0 has, at any rate. We're talking about streaming video, the technology that will bring QuickTime into the same league as RealVideo and Microsoft's NetShow. QuickTime is great, but if you want to use it to broadcast live video over a network, you're pretty much out of luck-- and that fact had led some very large and important web sites to ditch their QuickTime content altogether. After all, why support multiple formats?

So Apple has been promising streaming capability for QuickTime for a long time now. Heck, Steve Jobs even demonstrated the technology earlier last year, by sticking his live face into the middle of a Microsoft Word document. Streaming QuickTime looks nifty, and it offers a couple of vast advantages over its competitors. First of all, it's still QuickTime, so any application that can show a QuickTime movie can also show a live broadcast-- no extra work for applications developers. And secondly, Apple's reportedly making the server technology open-source, so that anybody can throw together his or her own broadcasting server product. You'd think with those advantages, QuickTime should really be able to clean up in the streaming media market. Unfortunately, it's not around to compete, having missed its most recent anticipated ship date of the last Macworld Expo. The last we'd heard, QuickTime 4 would finally make an appearance in February.

Or maybe not. According to Apple Insider, after missing its last ship date, QuickTime 4 has been downgraded on the Hurry Scale. While a February release still looks likely, their sources claim that it may not see the light of day until as late as the National Association of Broadcasters conference in April. Granted, that would be a great event at which to take the wraps off of the new technology, but we wonder at what point the people who count might just say, "too little, too late." QuickTime 4 sounds like it'll be Insanely Great, but it may also be labeled Insanely Late.