Gosh, is it early February already? How time flies! To think we almost totally forgot that it's Out Of Left Field Press Release season; how embarrassing. Then again, it's all just a matter of reading the signs. For example, we know it's Sweeps Month because Cordy got naked on "Angel." We know it's almost Valentine's Day because everything at The Mall is that heinous shade of pink. We know it's winter here in New England because, well, it's New England and the calendar doesn't say "July." And we know it's Out Of Left Field Press Release season because Apple is suddenly harping on about how QuickTime has "surpassed" RealPlayer.

The headline's a little misleading, actually, because some people might get the idea that Apple is using the word "surpass" to refer to feature sets or total number of active users, when in fact the company is tooting its own horn simply based on reported rate of growth. It seems that last year, Apple figures that QuickTime added 80 million new users, while RealPlayer only collared 75 million. However, we assume these figures are based primarily on downloads of the software, which might not be the most accurate way to count new users; heck, we ourselves have been QuickTime users for ages, but we must have downloaded the installer at least five or six times over the course of the past year. So the numbers are a reason to smile, maybe-- but to trumpet them in an honest-to-goodness press release seems a little over the top.

Think about it: a questionable difference of five million new users, and this justifies a press release? Picture this scenario: instead of reading about this online, let's say Phil Schiller ran up to you all excited, jumped up and down, and shouted, "I have FABULOUS NEWS!" You say, "What is it, Phil?" Phil then gushes like mad over those new user numbers. Maybe it's just us, but we'd probably pause, say "that's lovely, Phil" in as soothing a voice as we could manage, and then back away slowly while glancing around at escape options. Not that it isn't good news, of course; Apple's been chasing RealPlayer for years, now. It's just that this fact doesn't seem quite up to the scale of Apple's usual press release fodder. Frankly, it lacks context; it came from (all together, now!) out of left field.

Whoops! On second thought, scratch that whole bit about "lacking context"; it turns out we plumb forgot that QuickTime Live was postponed back in September when bad things happened, and now the rescheduled show starts this Monday. Clearly this latest "we're possibly starting to get more users than RealPlayer, maybe" press release is just an appetizer; further chunks of QuickTimey goodness are undoubtedly on deck for next week, and we're guessing that those announcements will be somewhat more substantial. How substantial? Well, MacMinute reports that QuickTime 5.1 will finally burst onto the scene, complete with long-awaited support for the MPEG-4 video format. Now that's something to get excited about. Phil: you may now commence jumping up and down.

Ah, Apple and its retail partners; the on-again, off-again relationship that makes Pamela and Tommy Lee look like eternal soul-mates enjoying an uninterrupted run of sheer connubial bliss. Who could forget Apple's severing all ties with every national retailer except CompUSA way back in 1998? Remember how eventually Best Buy came crawling back to get in on the action with the hot-selling iMac, only to bail again when the chain proved so incompetent it couldn't even sell the most talked-about computer ever to grace the retail scene? It just goes to show that trying to mold one's partner into something it's not only leads to heartache all 'round.

Unfortunately, Apple apparently didn't pick up on the hint, since there was a lot of that sort of thing going around. Sears, too, was cut from the list in the Great Retail Pruning of '98, but soon returned to the fold to sell all those nifty iGoods. But clearly, just like Best Buy, Sears was just counting the dollar signs dancing in front of its eyes instead of putting any effort into being a useful Mac retailer, because the chain's return to Macdom started out sketchy and just kept getting worse. Finally, roughly a year ago, Apple and Sears once again parted ways, though we doubt either side cried much about the breakup.

Let's move on to Banished National Reseller #3, shall we? In the middle of 2000, Apple let Circuit City climb back on board the Mac Train; in light of Best Buy's departure and an increasingly rocky relationship with Sears, it seemed the thing to do. So could this second chance finally bear some fruit? Is the third time the charm? Answer: not on your life, bub. AtAT has received numerous reports that Circuit City and Apple have parted ways, effective this morning, and faithful viewer Pfire reports that MacInTouch is hearing the same thing.

The reason for this latest split is a matter of conjecture, but we suspect that Apple has finally realized that this string of destructive retail relationships is nothing but a hurtful shame spiral. Perhaps Apple recognizes that it needs to learn to love itself before it can ever find happiness in a retail relationship with someone else; opening the first of its own retail stores last May was the first big step on the road to recovery. The moral for all you viewers out there is to duck into your local Circuit City as soon as possible, because we suspect you might discover some killer deals on closeout Mac gear. The lesson to Apple, on the other hand, is this: when it comes to love (or retail), forget the second chances-- always trust your first instincts, because most of those national retailers are pond scum, pure and simple.

Over the past week, we've gotten a lot of mail from viewers who are wondering why we never saw fit to mention Bill Gates's recent admission, as reported in The Register, that he's "really annoyed by the incredible pain [Microsoft has] put everyone through in computing." Well, frankly, the reason is pretty simple: what more could we possibly say about that? When the joke's already been made, we're basically out of a job. We need something we can work with, people.

Look, in order to wring a decent amount of drama out of a story, we need stuff like the fact that even as Chairman Bill shuts down his software development sweatshops for a whole month in hopes of fixing all those bugs and security holes (you know, so he can stop feeling so gosh-darned "annoyed"), his company has been forced to admit the existence of yet another vulnerability in one of its products. Even better would be something along the lines of that new vulnerability being in a Mac product, thus compromising a platform that's traditionally been largely immune to the oft-gaping holes in Microsoft products. Something like that would be AtAT gold, baby.

See, now, here's a perfect example: faithful viewer T.S. McBride wrote in to inform us of a CNET article about a new Microsoft security warning, which details a bug in Office v.X for the Mac. It seems that Microsoft didn't have time to build its much-loved Product Activation anti-piracy scheme into that particular chunk of software, so instead Office v.X checks for other instances of the product running on the local network; if it finds a copy running with the same serial number, it shuts down. Unfortunately, it turns out that a "flaw" in the checker "doesn't correctly handle a particular type of malformed announcement"; the upshot is that some meanie with nothing better to do could build a malformed packet, chuck it at your machine while you're happily typing your letter to mom, and blammo-- Office takes a header, so you'd better hope you were saving your work.

Actually, you know what? We take it back-- we can't make anything out of this, either. Man, Microsoft really has to stop lobbing us the easy ones... it's throwing us off our game. In the meantime, Office v.X users might want to consider downloading and applying this patch, just in case. Because as we all know, there's nothing worse than having a malformed packet maker in your midst.