Hmm, sometimes it's really hard to believe that only about a year ago, retailers were jumping the Apple ship like rats with little orange lifevests. Remember how ugly things got? Places like Sears and Circuit City sold Macs back then-- or rather, they failed to sell Macs. Take Apple's all-time-low public opinion level and combine it with store employees who wouldn't know a Mac if it bit them in the collective behind, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Or, more accurately, a recipe for a scenario in which one lonely Performa (oops-- we mean Power Mac) 6500 sits neglected and nonfunctional amid a sea of Wintels, as salespeople actively dissuade interested customers from buying anything from Apple who "just went out of business." Yeesh.

So isn't it satisfying to know that some of those retailers, who didn't blink an eye when Apple dropped them from the reseller list a year ago, are now begging to get back into the Mac game? More specifically, the iMac game: Apple's hit consumer product reportedly has retailers lining up in Cupertino to get a piece of the action. It was sweet enough to see Best Buy, who was one of the first to bail, re-enter the Mac fold, but according to a TechWeb article, they may just be the first of many. Spurred by the iMac's phenomenal sales and Apple's ability to keep them on store shelves, Apple is "getting an awful lot of requests" from hopeful chains. They're "turning down some and putting others on hold," presumably to keep things stable during this strategically crucial holiday rush-- but we're betting you'll see more stores selling iMacs next year.

Anyway, the next time you're steamed about the ineptitude of the guy at the local CompUSA or Best Buy, remember-- it's okay to be peeved. Heck, it's even healthy; we don't want to fall into complacency and take Mac ignorance for granted in stores selling Apple equipment. But at the same time, remember how bad things used to be, and keep in mind that there's always room for improvement. Now that retailers are asking Apple to let them sell iMacs, maybe they'll actually make some effort to sell the things right.

As with any big company, sometimes at Microsoft it seems like the right hand hasn't a clue what the left hand is doing. Case in point: the confusion emerging after last week's preliminary injunction, handed down by Judge Whyte and ordering that Microsoft alter its Java-enabled products in order to pass a Sun compatibility test. Right after the order was made public, Microsoft exec Paul Maritz let slip that Microsoft was considering the option of not supporting Java at all. The very next day, however, we were all told that the changes that had to be made to Windows 98, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft's Java developer tools were relatively simple, and the company figured they'd have no problem complying within the ninety-day deadline.

Now things are even a little more sketchy, which at first led us to believe that not everyone in Redmond is completely clear on the company's new Java strategy. Faithful viewer Grier Huffman pointed us toward two URLs: the first is a letter from Maritz to Microsoft's customers, ensuring them that the ruling will not "impact Microsoft's ability to deliver its products" and that Microsoft's customers will continue to "enjoy the benefits of the fastest, most functional, and reliable Java virtual machine on the market." The second, however, is the Internet Explorer for Macintosh page, which plainly states that "Microsoft will no longer ship a Java virtual machine with Internet Explorer for Macintosh." It knocked us for a loop for a second, until we went back and re-read Maritz's letter-- which very carefully specifies that Windows products will continue to support Java. And now it indeed seems clear that Microsoft is planning on yanking the Java virtual machine from its products for the Mac and Unix platforms, as detailed in a CNET article.

So there you have it; Microsoft plans on supporting Java-- even the new court-mandated "friendly" version-- in all of its products... for Windows only. That's not to say that those of you who use IE for the Mac won't be able to load Java-enhanced pages; future versions of IE will simply use the Mac OS' Java virtual machine instead. Heck, it's probably a good thing; why have two JVMs taking up disk space, anyway? Still, we bet a lot of people are going to see the headlines and think that Mac IE simply won't support Java at all from now on, which may lead to some comical situations. It's kind of like that episode of Three's Company when Mr. Furley overhead part of a conversation between Jack and the girls, misunderstood the whole situation, and hilarity ensued. Remember that one?

Looks like Microsoft's doing a little market research these days, which doesn't sound like a very unusual thing for a software company to be doing, right? Except that the Great Software Mill of the Pacific Northwest isn't asking customers what they think about their products; they're asking for opinions on "Redmond Justice" and the antitrust issues raised by America's favorite courtroom drama. Seemingly random people all over the country are receiving phone calls from pollsters trying to gauge public opinion on whether Microsoft has overstepped the bounds of antitrust law and, if so, what should be done to resolve the problem. The thing is, though, the phrasing of the questions and the construction of the poll seem just a little fishy to some people. MacInTouch has an excellent collection of information on this mysterious survey.

First of all, the questions in this roughly twenty-minute poll apparently don't touch on Microsoft's products much at all. Meaning, if you get called by these people, they probably aren't going to rank the statement "Microsoft Word 6 for the Mac was a shining example of software engineering at its best" somewhere between "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree." Instead, they want to know how you think Microsoft's doing in court; think of it as Nielsen ratings for "Redmond Justice." However, as with most public opinion polls, the people who put the thing together might be trying to skew your responses to match what they want to hear. We'll leave the question of survey bias as an exercise for the viewer, but we admit that the descriptions of the poll at MacInTouch do seem to indicate that Microsoft is pushing for data that they can use in the battle for public support.

Now, it's apparently not certain that Microsoft itself is behind this poll, but it seems pretty darn likely. What simultaneously amuses and disturbs us is the fact that the survey so closely resembles a public opinion poll that might be given by an elected official; it's the domain of the politician, not the software engineer. But then again, none of us is still kidding ourselves that Microsoft is just a software company, right? They're a world power, pure and simple, and like any world power in a crisis, their spin doctors need to know what to spin and in which direction. Still, it gives us the wiggins.