Michael Dell doesn't seem to get it. Several weeks ago he makes a catty comment about Apple needing to be shut down, and now he seems taken aback that Steve Jobs responded in kind last Monday. A PC Week Online article reports that Mike thinks Steve's response was "silly."

Okay, to his credit, he says that his own comment was "silly," too. But if he really wishes the whole issue would go away, calling Steve "silly" doesn't seem to be the way to go. Mike could take lessons in diplomacy from Nikita Khrushchev and it'd be an improvement. (By the way, we happen to think Steve is silly, much to his credit, while Mike appears to be merely clueless, which is just dull.)

For an example that we feel reveals his lack of vision, Dell added that the market has already voted for Wintels over Macs. Gee, and the American population voted Clinton into office, so I guess we shouldn't discuss alternatives, hmm? Goodness gracious.

Today marked the first day of Ralph Nader's big "Appraising Microsoft" conference in Washington, and the Computer Reseller News describes the lineup of attendees. It's like Redmond's Most Wanted.

Check it out: Gary Reback, the lawyer who Wired Magazine described as the only man that Bill Gates fears; Sun's Scott McNealy, who makes public anti-Microsoft tirades as a hobby (and whose presentation was apparently titled "No One Should Own the Alphabet"); Roberta Katz, the head mouthpiece over at Netscape; Andrew Schulmann, the guy who, among other things, "proved" that Microsoft hobbled its own software so it wouldn't run on a competitive product; the CEO of Caldera, who has sued Microsoft for anticompetitive practices; and, of course, Ralph himself. Zowie!

While Microsoft themselves understandably steered clear of the conference, they did mobilize some lackeys to help balance the proceedings. The Association of Microsoft Solution Providers, after a little prodding by the big guys in Redmond, encouraged its members to send letters to Nader, congress, and local newspapers in an attempt to counter the "negative PR and potentially damaging impact" that the conference will bring upon Microsoft. In addition, members of the AMSP are showing up in D.C. in person to try to counter the anti-Microsoft sentiment. The eternal struggle continues...

When the initial developer release of Rhapsody shipped a month ago, people were a little bummed out that the Blue Box wasn't included. The Blue Box, as you probably know, is the Mac OS compatibility module of Rhapsody that will allow us to run today's standard Mac applications. Well, the guys over at Reality have a slew of info on an early version of the Blue Box that has been seeded to select developers, and the news is pretty darn good.

As it currently stands, the Blue Box is just another Rhapsody application. When it's run, you can switch between the Yellow Box (the "new" and modern side of Rhapsody) and the Blue Box with a single keystroke. Many basic features work, including Appletalk, file sharing, almost all standard applications, etc. and speed is reportedly not bad at all for a product that's a year away from its ship date.

Rhapsody is shaping up to be a killer. Now if Apple just prices it correctly...