Color us incensed! Irked, even! Look, we at AtAT are just as happy about the Apple-CompUSA deal as anyone, but if Apple's going to put all its six-colored eggs in one retail basket, could they at least have picked a basket that would advertise? Faithful viewer Tony Posadas confirms what we ourselves have found here in Boston:

I live in suburban Cleveland and I must let you know that in today's Sunday newspaper (the Plain Dealer), the CompUSA advertisement had not a single Mac advertised. All I saw were a few software titles. Plenty of Wintel machines, but not a single Mac to be seen. Does CompUSA really care, or are they playing Apple for suckers??

Do you agree with us? Then head over to our Survey page, which will serve as a petition. Add your name to our list, and in a week or so, we'll forward the whole thing to CompUSA and Apple, in hopes of remedying this situation. After all, what good is that snail ad when the people who are intrigued by it can't find a single Mac in the ads in their Sunday paper?

Hee hee hee, this stuff just keeps getting better and better. The AtAT staff and our friend John Farr over at AppleLinks are in a tizzy over this latest "alternative operating system" to invade the Mac landscape. About a week ago we mentioned InfiniteOS, a new project to build an OS for the Mac from scratch. A couple of days later we told you that it was, in all likelihood, a hoax. But now Reality had to go and complicate matters by swearing up and down on a stack of bibles that the project is real.

That's right, the Reality guy is "good friends" with Kevin Avila, one of the lead developers on the project (and the man we are told was behind the previous hoaxes OpenOS and LimeOS), and he asserts that InfiniteOS is "definitely not" a hoax. The OS is currently console-based, but is slated to receive a graphical user interface soon. Reportedly, protected memory has already been implemented, and support for the G3 machines was added in "a matter of hours." (If it is a hoax, it's a pretty well-thought-out one.)

We invite any Mac programmer types to download the current build of InfiniteOS, fire it up on his/her PCI-based Powermac, and let us know what you think. If you're a Fonzie with a disassembler, dig around and tell us if you think this is real. We're still extremely doubtful that it's anything but a hoax, but unlike with the COS, at least this time there's some software upon which to build a conclusion. (We finally took the plunge and tried the booter program on our beloved PowerTower Pro, but all it did was crash hard. So in that respect, it's at least as much of an OS as, say, Windows 95.)

The lawsuits that plague the world of Apple (and that drive AtAT's ratings through the ceiling-- keep 'em coming!) are starting to bleed over into other related realms. Officials at Pixar, Steve Jobs' "real company," are suing a mystery defendant over some anonymous email that broadcast the salaries of all 400 Pixar employees. Holy Disclosure, Batman! A Washington Post article has more details.

The email message was signed "Steve Jobs," who of course denies that he sent it. So who did? Well, here's where the story starts to get AtAT-worthy: although the defendant in the lawsuit has not been named, sources report that Michael Murdock is under suspicion. "Gee, that name sounds familiar," ponder the longtime AtAT faithful viewers. "Where have I heard that name before?" Think back to our New Years' episode, in which Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison jokingly appointed Murdock as new CEO of Apple. Yup, same guy.

Murdock accepted the prank offer, but was then told by Jobs that if he showed up at Apple, he would be asked to leave; afterwards, he revealed his bitterness to the press. What we didn't know was that Murdock worked for Pixar for six years, before leaving the company in the early nineties. But would Murdock have access to the incredibly accurate salary list in the email message? He denies any involvement in this scheme and states that he doesn't have "anything to hide." Stay tuned to AtAT as this mysterious tale of vengeance unfolds...