If you ask us, all the speculation about a hand-cranked portable Mac has officially gotten way out of hand. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you know what we're talking about; a couple of years ago, some ingenious fellow concocted a relatively small hand-powered generator that was capable of providing juice for various electrical devices. This generator would let people run radios and other gadgets in areas without widespread access to electrical outlets, and without Quickie Marts on every corner where they could otherwise buy disposable batteries for eight bucks apiece. Now, a long time ago, when this hand-wound generator was getting lots of news coverage for its potential benefits to third-world countries, it was even shown powering an Apple eMate-- a CNN article on the technology even has QuickTime footage of this, if you're skeptical. It was reported that Apple was involved in negotiations to license the hand-crank technology and include it in a version of the eMate. Of course, when the whole Newton project got blown to smithereens, the eMate died a horrible death and that was that. Or so we would have thought.

Recently, though, the hand-cranked portable rumors have sprung up again, this time focusing on the upcoming consumer portable, code-named "P1" and expected to sell under the names "WebMate" and "MacMate." While everyone loves the idea of a laptop that you can wind up when you need some extra juice, frankly, the whole rumor seemed just a little too goofy to be true, even though we're talking about Apple. For one thing, as many people pointed out, the wind-up power supply that's used in those famous radios is too large and heavy to include in a laptop computer that's supposed to be roughly the dimensions and weight of a PowerBook 2400. For another, it just smacks of deliberate misinformation leaked by Apple in an attempt to discover the holes in its Wall of Secrecy™. For a third, it just sounds, well, goofy. So imagine our utter surprise when Apple Recon received a letter from Fred Johnson of the Apple Marketing Group, all but confirming that Apple is indeed working on putting wind-up power in the MacMate (which will be targeted at the educational market), though Steve Jobs is reportedly "still debating" whether that feature should also be included in the consumer-targeted WebMate.

So there it is-- it sounds like we may just see a hand-cranked P1 after all. Unless, of course, that email from Fred Johnson didn't come from Fred at all, but from somebody yanking Recon's chain... Recon didn't post the full mail headers, so we can't see for ourselves, but we admit we're suspicious. After all, has Apple ever commented publicly on any feature of the P1? If the P1 were really to include such an innovative feature as wind-up power, wouldn't that feature either go into an official press release or be guarded as a Level 6 Secret? If you ask us, something's a little fishy, here, but Recon's been around for a long time; they wouldn't be taken in by something as basic as faked email-- would they?

Addendum: Thanks to the many viewers who pointed out that Recon was indeed yanking our chains. The alleged email from Fred Johnson was dated February 29th, 1999 (we only checked to make sure it wasn't April 1st) and Recon admits the email was false in their "explanation page." Interestingly enough, Recon didn't make up the message-- someone really did try to fake them out with false email from "Fred Johnson;" they were sharp enough to catch it, as we would have expected. They just decided to post it anyway to see how many people would fall for it-- like we mostly did. ;-) (The previous three paragraphs are unchanged from our initial broadcast, to stand as a historical record.)

Yesterday's episode generated quite a lot of feedback. In response to the "Windows crashes after running for 49.7 days straight" issue, several people wrote in to tell us that 49.7 days is actually 2³² milliseconds, which explains the rather odd runtime limit; apparently the "timing bug" is just a set-size buffer overflowing or something like that. Even more people wrote in to ask just where in the hell Microsoft found a Windows 95 machine that had managed to run 49.7 days without crashing for some other reason. Sorry, folks-- we don't know; if we did, we'd chuck AtAT and start living off the film rights after selling the Amazing 50-Day Wintel™ to LucasFilms and the Guinness people. It's no wonder this bug went undiscovered for so long.

Besides that, though, we were intrigued by some of the feedback we got regarding this whole "Pentium III-only" web site issue. To put it lightly, people are incensed. The idea that Intel is cutting deals with content providers to create web sites that only allow access from Pentium III's appears to have awoken some larger sense of moral outrage. Faithful viewer Daniel Fox, however, had an interesting idea for a strategy to fight the Pentiumization of the web:

I realize you were joking when you talked about blocking access to Windows... but consider this: What if lots of websites get together and agree to block access to Pentium III computers, based on the same serial number technology? Your site, slashdot.org, and a few hundred others could get this movement rolling, and before you know it, the surfing experience becomes really [censored] for anyone using a Pentium III. All they would see is a message to the effect of: "You can't access this site because you are using a Pentium III, which is a processor designed to violate your right to privacy." There might be a link to more info... etc. We, the web community, can bring down even a giant like Intel... if we work together.

Has anyone thought of writing a program that emulates the serial number embedded into the Pentium III? I'm sure a budding young programmer could emulate the process and have his/her program produce random and bogus serial numbers... If this idea took off, then it would basically negate any effort that Intel has put into the serial number concept, as any web site requesting the serial number could never be sure that the serial number it recieves is a true serial number or a fake one.

Have you entered the darkest stages of "Redmond Justice" withdrawal yet? Because now that court's closed and the lawyers are off sunning themselves for Spring Break, we're really starting to miss our daily dose of antitrust trial drama. (It doesn't help that Buffy's in reruns, now, too; prosecuting Microsoft for antitrust violations, staking vampires-- what's the real difference?) We've developed a mild twitch, but we haven't yet spiralled out of control into the land of cold sweats and uncontrollable shakes. We've been feeding our habit with the slow trickle of "Redmond Justice" commentary that continues to seep its way out over the wires.

Of particular interest to us RJ junkies is an Inter@ctive Week Online article which contains mini-interviews with the top dogs of both sides-- Microsoft veep for Legal and Corporate Affairs William Neukom in one corner, and the government's lead attorney David Boies in the other. What makes the interviews particularly interesting is the way that both guys were asked the exact same questions, which allows for some compare-and-contrast fun which is more entertaining than, say, trying to brush the invisible bugs off of one's skin. In particular, Neukom's wooden responses that they "do not believe the government has begun to show the evidence that is required to support any of the three aspects of their case" are a hoot and a holler, because we bet that finding a legal expert (not on Microsoft's payroll) who believes that Microsoft will win this case would be tougher than finding a Windows machine that runs for fifty days without crashing.

As if that weren't enough, personally, we think Neukom's already-shaky credibility crumbles into dust when he says that this trial is "not particularly entertaining." Blasphemy! Just wait until the "Redmond Justice" producers hear that comment-- we bet Neukom's contract doesn't get renewed for another season unless he consents to some serious pay cuts. The walls have ears, William...