One of the great things about Apple is that, while the company has changed a lot over the years, its corporate culture continues to include strong senses of humor and whimsy. For example, take all those great Easter Eggs buried in the Mac OS. Depending on what version you're running, you can find anything from a flying iguana flag to a hidden game of Break-Out to crayons that wear out to messages like "Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!" And one of the really nice things about these hidden little gems is that, very often, they contain lists of the Apple employees who contributed to a given project; for instance, switch to the Finder, hold down the Option key, and select "About The Finder..." from the Apple menu to see a view of Silicon Valley and wait for a list of engineers who worked on the Finder. It's a sort of "geek fame," and we think it's pretty cool. It gives the Mac an even more human face.

Sadly, though, that may all be coming to an abrupt end. According to Mac the Knife, no less an authority than Steve Jobs himself recently issued a company-wide memo instituting a new policy: "Moving forward, no product should include a list of individual contributors, even if it is hidden... Instead, our products should all be labeled as a work of Apple in an appropriate manner." Hmmm. Sounds a little like "We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause." Where have we heard that before? We hope this isn't a really bad omen. The reason for the credits ban is that any credits lists "do not recognize all of the individuals who contribute to creating [Apple's] products," and leaving people out is just going to lead to hurt feelings.

Note that this isn't a ban on Easter Eggs in general-- but given how many Easter Eggs provide a list of credits, we think one of the main incentives to put them in has been eliminated. How likely is it that a team of engineers will want to bury a secret option-click into the Date & Time control panel that just says "Date & Time was brought to you by Apple"? Oooooh. And while we understand Steve's desire not to leave anyone out, he was the guy who had the signatures of every Mac engineer burned into the case of the original Macintosh way back when. Is this a fundamental paradigm shift? And is it really for the better? (Insert ominous music here.)

What's this? Reports of infighting and tension on the set of "Redmond Justice"? Say it ain't so, guys. After the federal government and 19 states joined forces to throw a wrench into Microsoft's not-so-subtle plans for world domination, we thought they presented a united front capable of stopping the juggernaut. Certainly during the main body of the trial, things seemed to be going well for the government representatives; anyone who followed the trial and expected findings of fact from Judge Jackson in Microsoft's favor needs to put the cap back on the airplane glue.

But now that a ruling in their favor seems imminent, there are rumors that the feds and the states are squabbling over just what to do to Microsoft to prevent further anticompetitive behavior. The states are apparently pushing for drastic measures, like a corporate break-up or the forced open-sourcing of Windows. The feds, on the other hand, are said to be considering something a bit less aggressive. And according to a Washington Post article, it was these "disturbing reports" of divergent government opinions that prompted Judge Jackson to appoint Richard Posner as a settlement mediator. Jackson's hoping that Microsoft will settle before the rumored tension between the feds and the states derails an otherwise solid case.

The feds and the states, on the other hand, are both saying that those tensions are largely fictional. Smilin' David Boies told Jackson that the whole government team is one big happy family: "I do not anticipate any significant differences here." And Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut added that "reports of divergent views were somewhat exaggerated." But we'll see just how "exaggerated" those differences are as everyone steps back up to the bargaining table...

Those of you who have been tuning in on a regular basis know that we, your friendly AtAT staff, are a highly principled team, with many deeply-held convictions. We believe that if everyone ate a healthy portion of Tater Tots every once in a while, there'd be no more wars. We believe that operating systems should suck as little as possible, maintaining a cool-to-lame ratio of at least 5:1. (Incidentally, every Microsoft operating system we've ever used scores so low, the values are best expressed in scientific notation.) We believe that Steve Jobs is an alien messenger sent from the stars, charged with the divine mission of injecting a little style into our otherwise beige little lives. But above all, we believe that Macs should light up when you use them.

We've been through all this before: the pre-release rumors about the iMacs lighting up, the original iMac mouse glowing until the feature was removed before shipment, the faint glow of the white Apple logo on the original PowerBook G3 Series, etc. But it wasn't until the "bronze" PowerBook G3 that we really got our wish-- the Apple logo on those suckers glows so brightly you could use it to signal planes in heavy fog. At that point we'd hoped that Apple had finally "seen the light" and accepted that light-up computers are the wave of the future. Of course, then we got the Power Mac G4 and the new "Kihei" iMac, neither of which glow at all. Fine, we thought-- Apple's just putting this cool feature into the portables. After all, we'd heard that while the Blueberry or Tangerine logo on the iBook's lid doesn't actually light up, it bears a cool glowing halo while the system's in use.

Of course, now that we actually own an iBook, we know just how dim that glow really is. Sure, in a dark room it's visible if you're looking for it, but it's nowhere near as impressive as the big, bright Apple beacon on the PowerBooks. Luckily, we stumbled across the secret to the iBook's hidden glow in MacNN's forums: put the Blueberry iBook under a black light. Reportedly, the handle "glows bright blue" under ultraviolet light. Sadly, not being hippies, we don't have immediate access to a black light to give this a shot-- but perhaps we can do what one of the posters did: take the iBook to a black-light-enabled strip club. ("Actually, miss, we're just here to see our laptop glow. Uhhh, I mean...") Hey, anything in the name of science.