Just because "Redmond Justice" took a day off doesn't mean that Microsoft has to stop being entertaining. For instance, take the case of their recent announcement that the long-awaited Windows NT 5.0 will officially be renamed "Windows 2000." They claim that this new naming scheme will simplify customers' choices and lend a new feel of consistency to their high-end operating system. But according to a ClieNT Server NEWS article (brought to our attention by way of SlashDot following a tip from faithful viewer Todd Wheeler), Microsoft's going to have to reconsider; the name "Windows 2000" is already trademarked. Say hello to Robert Kerstein, a former CFO of a company named McCaw Cellular Corporation, who registered the trademark for use on his Encyberpedia web site. (Too bad he didn't name it "Encarta.")

Now, if this situation doesn't seem eerily familiar, you must have missed Microsoft's whole legal battle over the name "Internet Explorer," which was in fact trademarked by a small ISP in Illinois before the Redmond giant decided to appropriate the name for its web browser. That whole fracas was only resolved a few months ago, and only because the ISP owner's creditors ordered a cash settlement. The lawsuit had gone on so long, the ISP had gone out of business after being crippled by legal bills; with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of lawyers and cash at their disposal, Microsoft is virtually guaranteed to win any court case brought against it by a smaller entity. So if they want to, Microsoft shouldn't have any difficulty throwing money at the problem to secure the rights to the name "Windows 2000," but the embarrassment of making the same mistake twice could be a real black eye.

It's interesting to note that the same lack of attention to detail that often makes using Windows itself such a frustrating and inconsistent experience also leads to fun little situations like this most current naming snafu. In contrast, let's consider the naming of Apple's upcoming NT 5.0 competitor, Mac OS X. Why the jump from 8.5 (or rather, 8.6 or 8.7) to the Roman numeral for ten? Is it just because the technology will be such a quantum leap forward it justifies a similarly dramatic numerical increment? The marketing folks may want you to think that's the only reason, but to be honest, it's also because "OS-9" is already trademarked. See, Apple apparently actually checks these little details before naming a product and going public. It's a radical concept, we know, but those guys think different, right?

Ah, vast pricing discrepencies-- just another of the many glorious little annoyances that accompanies being a Mac user, along with lack of software and social ostracism. Now that Apple's on its way back up, perhaps some of these problems will lessen or dissipate entirely over time, but right now, they're the price we pay for sticking with our platform of choice. We can handle being viewed as the lepers of the computing world, and there's precious little software only on the PC side that we really want to run on our Macs, but the price differences for similar equipment really toasts our cheese.

Let's take a specific example. Say you're a Mac gamer, and you want the latest and greatest 3D acceleration technology to pop into your G3 to make those long hours of Unreal and Myth even more magical. Right now, that means getting a card equipped with a Voodoo 2 chip-- which should be make your choice pretty simple, since there's only one company actually making such a card for the Mac platform. So you're drooling over the specs for the Micro Conversions Game Wizard and mentally calculating how many straight meals of ramen noodles it's going to take before you can scrape together the $350 you'll need to buy this ultimate gaming accessory. That's when you notice a similar card from a different company-- also PCI, also Voodoo 2, also with 12 MB of texture memory-- selling for a mere $99. And it's PC-only.

Now what makes this all the more galling is that the hardware is, as far as we can tell, completely identical. The only thing different about the Mac version is the inclusion of Mac drivers. (That was, after all, the promise of PCI-- Mac users would get to use a wide variety of formerly PC-only cards because manufacturers would only have to write new drivers to make their hardware Mac-compatible.) While we're fully aware that the Mac market is much smaller than the PC market and therefore prices need to be higher for manufacturers to recoup costs and make a profit, we have to say that charging $250 for some drivers seems like downright price gouging.

Which is why we can totally understand (though not condone) the recent posting of generic Mac Voodoo 2 drivers on the Internet. People who download these apparently illegally-leaked drivers are reportedly able to use any PC-branded Voodoo 2 card in their Macs, thus saving themselves hundreds of dollars. You can read more about these leaked drivers at Accelerate Your Mac-- including how they may inflict untold damage on the already fragile Mac gaming market. After all, if nobody buys Mac-specific cards, nobody will sell those cards, and nobody will write games that would use those cards. But the simple fact that people are frustrated enough to resort to using stolen drivers should indicate that current pricing on Mac Voodoo 2 cards is completely out of touch with reality. Hopefully we'll start seeing some changes soon.

Yikes... SyQuest, long the top dog in the game of removable storage technology, has "suspended operations" and may file for bankruptcy. In recent years, the company's taken a real beating in the market due to the popularity of Iomega's Zip and Jaz drives. Take a look at CNET's article to read more about SyQuest's most recent financial woes. Why do we bring this up? Two reasons. First of all, we're pretty certain that SyQuest had not yet gotten around to releasing its translucent red SparQ drive for the iMac, and now that they've ceased operations, iMac owners may never get to buy the funky-looking removable drives. But we also think it's possible to draw some interesting conclusions from this latest turn in the battle of removable storage.

Several years ago, when AtAT was but a glimmer on the horizon, I needed to buy some kind of removable storage device to back up the data on our LC 575. Since the 575 had a whopping 160 MB hard drive, I neeed something that would let me do the job without swapping floppies all day long. (See, even back then floppies were showing their obsolescence...) While pacing the show floor of Macworld Expo, SyQuest had a huge, flashy booth and a swarm of smiling boothbots demonstrating the benefits of SyQuest technology-- the biggest of which, they told me, was that "everyone else is using these," like service bureaus and places like that. Iomega, on the other hand, had a really small booth and a couple of reps willing to talk to whomever had questions. The really cool thing at Iomega's booth, though, was the Bernoulli drive they had hooked into a paint-shaker sort of device. As the drive was shaken back and forth, it continued to play a QuickTime movie flawlessly, effectively demonstrating the ruggedness of the Bernoulli technology. I passed on the industry-standard SyQuest drives and went home with a 150 MB Bernoulli unit instead.

These days, Iomega's on top and SyQuest is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. We like to think of this as an illustration of the triumph of better technology over "industry standards" and the status quo. That's an oversimplification of the complex matters at hand, of course, and the truth is, SyQuest makes (or rather, made) some pretty cool stuff. But it's still tempting to draw parallels between this latest turn of events and the possibility of upheaval in the world of desktop operating systems. That karma wheel keeps turning, so who knows what's around the next corner?