So just how badly do you want an iMac? Bad enough to give your soul over to unbridled capitalistic consumer spending for the next three years? See, we fully understand that not everybody can rush out and just plunk down $1200 or so for, say, a friendly Grape-flavored computer appliance for their living room. And at the same time, there are those that blanch at the thought of paying $28 a month for five and a half years, since such a payment plan makes that friendly little computer more like $1900 instead of $1200-- and by the time it's paid off, it's been obsolete as a computer for a few years already (though it's still a fantastic addition to any house's decor). So what to do? Well, if you're a good little consumer who regularly buys over $100 worth of stuff at the mall every month, you might be interested in signing up for a free iMac.

Now that everyone's ears have pricked up at the phrase "free iMac," we should point out the obvious fact that nothing in life is free-- at least, nothing cool. (Yeah, yeah, there's love, and life, and health, and all that stuff, but we're talking about shiny things that you can pawn if you have to.) So this "free iMac" deal has a catch: according to a Reuters story, you have to agree to spend at least $100 a month at the Shopss.com online mall. For three years. Any month in which you fail to spend at least $100, they will charge you $100 for the iMac. And it gets a little worse: it's not just $100 you have to spend, it's actually $25 in each of four different "stores." That means buying a single $125 microwave oven doesn't fulfill your monthly requirement-- you still need to spend at least $25 at each of three other stores.

On top of that, you also have to agree to use One Stop Communication as your ISP, which is another $19.95 a month (though if you spend over $200 at Shopss.com in any given month, that fee is waived). All in all, it sounds like a great deal for people who already shop a lot, but it still sounds to us like a major and scary commitment for a computer as inexpensive as the iMac. Apparently a lot of people don't agree with us, though; in the first two hours after the "free iMac" deal was announced, 2500 people signed up. Since One Stop Communication is only "giving away" 25,000 iMacs, if you're interested, you might want to hurry.

So what do you make of Apple's new patent, reported over at Mac OS Rumors? As described, Apple's been granted a patent for some kind of "customizable enclosures for portable computers." Given that the next "different" portable computer that Apple is expected to release is the consumer portable "P1," this patent might give a little glimpse into what we can expect from the P1 when it finally appears sometime in the next few months. Customizable enclosures? Sounds like a great draw to the young and hip, and a feature that will help differentiate the P1 from other laptops on the market.

According to the patent, Apple's scheme will allow these mobile computers to achieve "cosmetic individuality" by having enclosure panel housings made of several different materials, like "transparent or colorful plastic" (now, where have we seen that before?) or stainless steel. Then the housing is also covered with a "textile, vinyl, leather, or elastomeric material." Fair enough. Suggested functional uses for this design are "pouches for storage, additional electronic component configurability, a solar power source, or a transporting means." And most importantly, the enclosure housing is "interchangeable" with others, making it possible for the user to completely revamp the look (and to a certain extent, the functionality) of the laptop at any time. Sounds to us like Apple will do the predictable thing and ship P1's in five fruit flavors, plus open the doors for third parties to create their own enclosures that consumers could buy at any time. We're imagining thicker enclosures with additional battery power, enclosures featuring designs from popular TV shows (the P1 is a consumer device, after all), and-- dare we say it?-- the long sought after mood enclosure. Sign us up.

That's all certainly possible, but at the same time, when we read the description of the patent, we have to say that it doesn't sound all that much different from the PowerBook 1400's "bookcovers" feature. You remember those; the 1400 had a removable panel that made up roughly half of the laptop's cover. It included a plain, PowerBook-grey plastic bookcover, for those who wanted a staid, consistent, all-over-matching laptop, and also a clear plastic one that allowed the user to put anything underneath it they wanted-- photos, notes, a calendar, etc. In fact, at least some of the 1400's we saw also came with lots of patterned cardboard inserts to use with the clear bookcover for instant style changes. And then third parties got into the act, and we saw all kinds of bookcovers for sale-- brushed aluminum, polished wood, a solar collector, and even one that looked like the grey PowerBook bookcover except that it had a bullethole in it, with wires and circuits sticking out. Whether this patent is just the bookcover feature or perhaps the next logical extension of it, we couldn't tell you. But it sure will be fun to find out.

So at what point does something stop being funny and start being just plain sad? Apparently not content with simply turning their anti-trust trial into a Jerry Lewisesque slapstick farce, Microsoft is now pushing their defense further into the realm of the pathetic and absurd. Instead of an intense courtroom drama or a screwball comedy, we now feel like we're watching a Beckett play in production. Case in point? Not a week after Microsoft's legal team was forced to admit that a videotaped test they entered into evidence was in fact an "illustration" created by splicing together footage shot of more than one computer ("Whoops! Sorry! Didn't we mention that?"), they introduced yet another tape of yet another test-- and, once again, had to admit that things weren't quite what they seemed. A Washington Post article has the pitiable details.

It seems that Microsoft wanted to prove that Windows 98 makes the process of signing up for an Internet service provider much quicker than it is under Windows 3.1. (We imagine that their point would be that the integration of the web browser is what makes the difference, though that sure seems like a specious argument to us, given all the other differences in the two operating systems.) Anyway, the videotape in question showed two computers walking through the ISP sign-up process-- one running Windows 3.1, and one running Windows 98. The Windows 98 system finished first by a wide margin, but once the presentation was done, government mouthpiece David Boies (the eagle-eyed trustbuster who noticed the discrepancy leading to the first videotape fracas) asked whether the two computers had identical-speed modems. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft "thought so" but didn't know offhand. They checked, and found that the Windows 98 computer had the benefit of a 56K modem, while the Windows 3.1 machine had only a 33.6 kbps model. We imagine the phrase "sinking feeling" must have applied collectively to the Microsoft legal team by this point, though they stood their ground and insisted that the speed of the modems was "irrelevant" to the task at hand.

Granted, Microsoft has a very valid point: pitting a 56K modem against a 33.6K modem during an ISP sign-up test isn't quite the same kind of blinding gaffe as being caught with faked and fabricated video evidence, but it's just about the last thing that Microsoft needed right now. Whatever credibility they might possibly have retained in the judge's eyes has very likely crumbled to dust following this latest craziness. One would think that after last week's media feeding frenzy, Microsoft would be very careful to make sure that any further submitted test results were absolutely and completely credible. The fact that they'd overlook something as simple as making sure two computers in an Internet access speed test have the same speed modems is just one more example of Microsoft's lamentable lack of attention to detail. At this point we can only assume that they either seriously believe that they're invulnerable, or they're actually trying to lose. As far as we're concerned, we're more interested in hearing if the two tested machines even had the same processor in them...