Remember our Steve Jobs Progress Report a week ago, in which we bemoaned the lack of action on Apple's part with respect to retaining its core market of "content creators?" Remember how we particularly bemoaned how we still couldn't "buy a Mac tuned for or bundled with Photoshop?" Well, Mac OS Rumors now reports that Apple and Adobe are planning on releasing a "Media Mac" that essentially provides just that.

The "Media Mac" is rumored to be a Powermac G3 preinstalled with a full suite of Adobe products, including the Holy Trinity of Adobe graphics products: Photoshop, Illustrator, and Pagemaker. In addition, we'd assume that Pagemill/Sitemill, Acrobat, Dimensions, etc. will be included as well. In a separate story, Rumors describes a new Powermac G3 model that will also be introduced at the Expo, which includes a 275 MHz processor and a 75-79 MHz bus speed. That screamer is most likely the model that Apple would use for the "Media Mac," since the target audience is obviously graphics professionals who want the fastest machine possible. A 275 MHz G3, especially with the faster bus speed, will leave any Pentium II machine in the dust-- and assuming that there will be a nice price break on the bundled software, the "Media Mac" could be Apple's best weapon in the fight to stem the influx of NT systems into the graphics world.

What do you think-- are Apple and Adobe higher-ups faithful AtAT viewers? If so, listen up, guys: as cutting-edge content creators, we'd be more than happy to test-drive a "Media Mac" for you. ;-)

And in another stunning act of prescience, we've been running around telling people that VirtualPC on a Powermac G3 makes for a very workable Windows solution, though we've had nothing to support that claim-- until now. MacNN has posted a special report from a reader who provides detailed information about how he installed VirtualPC on a stock G3/266, and configured it as a dual-boot Windows 95 and Windows NT system. When he was done, he had a G3 that was flawlessly running Sybase System XI SQL Server for NT at estimated Pentium 133-166 speeds.

It's a fascinating story, and it illustrates that not only can the Mac do Windows, but in many ways it does Windows better than Wintel systems do. One benefit is that since the VirtualPC's Windows disk partition is just a Mac file, backing up your VirtualPC is as easy as pressing command-D in the Finder. This makes the typically-frightening software installation process totally fixable; afraid that installing that new Windows software will nuke your registry or screw up your IRQ's? No problem, try it and if it fails, just trash your whole PC and work from the backup folder. Another plus is that VirtualPC lets you save the state of the PC at any time, so you can restore the state of your PC exactly as you left it-- with six applications running and fourteen documents open. Still another is the ability to ship your entire PC--including its saved state--to a Mac-using friend on a Jaz cartridge or the like. The possibilities are pretty mind-boggling.

Of course, this all assumes that you'd actually want or need to run Windows in the first place, which, thankfully, we personally do not. But for Mac people who do, The G3's really make VirtualPC a viable option-- and one that's even better than a "real" Wintel in some respects.

Although not directly related to everyone's favorite legal battle (otherwise known as "Redmond Justice"), we found it noteworthy that Netscape has just launched a new campaign designed to remind Windows customers that they have a choice of browsers. Even if Microsoft wins its case and retains the right to force Wintel manufacturers to keep Internet Explorer loaded and on the desktop, Netscape's plan is to provide manufacturers a desktop icon to stick right next to the IE one-- which, when clicked, allows the end user to download the latest version of Netscape's browser, as well as to make that browser the default and to uninstall IE (which, of course, Microsoft is still claiming is not possible). We read about it over at Webintosh.

We think Netscape's plan is a clever one. Now, if manufacturers so desire, they can basically ship Windows boxes with two browsers on the desktop, which makes it much less likely for Windows users to stick with IE just because it's the default. We're looking forward to this initiative's success; we'll have to report back once the next quarter's browser marketshare numbers are in.