Oh, thank heaven-- Apple has just issued a press release announcing that it and Sorenson Media have settled their legal differences and now everybody's playing nicely on the playground again. We don't need to tell you just how much of a relief this is to us here at the AtAT compound, where we've been plagued by constant worry, chronic anxiety, and near-terminal insomnia over this lawsuit ever since it was filed last whenever ago. We've literally had to go on medication to treat the bleeding ulcers we've suffered in the wake of this gutwrenching legal struggle, but now the suit is settled, the nightmare is over, and we can finally go back to living our normal lives.

Right after we ask one little question.

Um, exactly what lawsuit was this, now?...

Oh, come on, don't look at us like that. Fine, so we may have embellished a little about the sleeplessness and the gaping holes in our stomach linings and actually knowing even the teensiest smidgen about what Apple and Sorenson were slapping each other for, or indeed that they were slapping each other at all. But cut us a little slack, here; we've done a bit of digging, and it turns out that news of the original suit's filing broke at the end of April-- when the entire AtAT staff was sitting around in a hospital, waiting for one of us to pop out of another one of us.

Anyway, after a slog through MacCentral's archives, we think we're pretty much up to speed on this little drama thread now: Apple paid $4.5 million to Sorenson for exclusive rights to use Sorenson's video codec in QuickTime; Sorenson then licensed an arguably similar technology to Macromedia; Apple sued Sorenson for violating the exclusivity clause in the contract; Sorenson then countersued Apple for kicking up a ruckus and thereby harming its business. And now the resolution, according to a Bloomberg article, is that Sorenson can indeed license its technology to Macromedia-- now that somebody probably threw a wad of cash at somebody else. If money did change hands, no one's talking about who paid whom and how much.

Whatever. All we know is that the lawsuits are over, everybody's satisfied, and we can finally fall asleep at night without sobbing into our pillows about Apple and Sorenson not getting along. Or at least we can stop lying about it, which is the next best thing.

Come and get 'em while they're still sizzling, folks-- Apple's new celebrity Switch ads are on the tube and up at Apple's servers, so click fast and click hard. The Tony Hawk spot to which we alluded a couple of days ago is now officially public, and there are a couple of other "Let's Dazzle The Public Into Spending Tons of Cash By Showing Endorsements by Famous People" commercials as well. Let the starstruck mass consumerism commence!

What's particularly interesting about these new celebrity Switch ads, though, is that Apple has apparently decided to institute a policy of only showcasing one specific kind of celebrity-- not TV stars, not rock stars, not even movie stars (well, okay, Tony did drive the Pizza Hut truck in Gleaming The Cube), but video game stars. Tony Hawk is, of course, the bundle of polygons chewing up the screen in the smash series of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games (so, when you think about it, it's a really amazingly fortunate coincidence that his hame just happens to be "Tony Hawk"), one of which is even available natively for the Mac. Kelly Slater, who also stars in a new Switch ad, is a newcomer to the video game world-- he was tapped to star in the brand new Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer game, presumably because his name happens to match the game title. Apparently a lot of video game stars get work that way.

And then of course there's Video Game Star Number Three, who's a lot more old-school than either Kelly or Tony. It's been over twenty years, of course, so it's no surprise that he looks a little different these days; he's no longer orange and fuzzy, for one thing, plus he appears to have outgrown that whole "armless and swearing" phase, but Q*Bert is back and it seems he's a Mac guy. He's also now a scratch DJ, apparently, which we admit is more than just a little surreal... but heck, we're fans from way back, so we suppose owe it to him to support his changing career direction. And his new career choice still involves spinning discs, so hey.

So there you have it: Apple's master scheme to win market share by exploiting Mac-using video game stars. Now all we need is a Switch ad that features Donkey Kong talking about how ditching his Wintel for a Mac finally let him finish off that pesky Mario once and for all. Then we can die happy.

Well, nurtz-- if you've been sitting around holding your breath for Apple to become the first company to ship a self-contained laptop capable of burning DVDs, you can finally exhale, because the dream is officially over. An article over at ExtremeTech notes that the title that should have gone to Apple has instead been snatched by Sony, who has just announced three new VAIO notebooks equipped with an internal DVD-R/RW drive and "new one-click DVD-creation software." We're going to tiptoe waaaaay out on a limb, here, and bet that for quality and ease of use that software's no iDVD, but if there really are people out there who need a portable DVD-recording rig, for now at least, Sony's got Apple beat.

That isn't to say, of course, that Apple won't ship a SuperDrive-equipped PowerBook eventually; it's just that it won't be first. Indeed, we've been hearing about a SuperDrive PowerBook coming "real soon now" for, well, it must be going on just about thirteen years now. So clearly it's just around the corner. If you're looking for ways to fuel your impatient optimism on the subject, O'Grady's PowerPage has a baffling sort-of-English translation of some Japanese report that SuperDrive PowerBooks are actually on the assembly lines right this very second. (At least, that's what we think it says. Ah, the joys of auto-translation...)

Eh. So Apple can't be first at everything-- no biggie. And when it comes to losing this battle in the innovation war, heck, at least it was Sony who beat them to the punch; Sony is probably the only major PC manufacturer who actually designs stuff, instead of simply assembling it. There's no shame there. (At least, not much.) But if Dell starts shipping DVD-burning Latitudes before that PowerBook sees the light of day, heads are gonna roll.

Looking on the bright side, Apple does still have the opportunity to ship the world's first DVD-burning laptop that won't incapacitate half of its owners with hernias and spinal injuries. Sony's new DVD-burning "desktop replacement" notebooks are apparently roughly the size of a desk, weighing in at approximately eight and a half pounds. Gee, does each model come with a free muscular dwarf to lug the thing around for you everywhere you go?