We've gotten a huge amount of viewer mail with questions about and perspectives on the rumor-of-the-week about Apple. It seems like everyone's talking about the Apple Media Player (also known as Columbus) and what it could mean for the future of our favorite computer company. Well, sorry to say, we're not exactly privy to any information about this top-secret project than most people, but what's becoming very clear is that darn near nobody outside of Steve Jobs himself seems to know exactly what this thing is. (And in fact, if some sources are to believed, Steve's not too sure himself.)

Here's the quick summary: the AMP is a set-top box like a WebTV. It's also an eMate-style handheld/laptop, while also being a standard Mac box like you can buy today. It allows you to browse the internet on your television, while watching DVD movies on its built-in color LCD screen. It runs the Mac OS and can run Mac applications, while also only running Allegro Lite, which runs most Mac apps. In addition, it only runs some other unspecified OS which won't let it run any Mac apps at all. Did we mention that it's also the Apple NC that we've been hearing about for so long? And Mac the Knife hints that it's also a new hardware platform reborn from the ashed of CHRP. No wonder it's called "Steve's project with no name."

So despite the leaks that brought the AMP to the public eye long before Apple had hoped, there's so much obvious misinformation floating around that no one seems particularly sure of just what this thing is. Presumably that's just how Apple wants it. It's certainly a nice suspense-builder, too, and you can be sure we'll be on the edge of our collective seat as this drama unfolds.

Interesting... MacCentral reports that the Apple Store is no longer selling Powerbook G3's. Apparently, when you try to buy one online, you receive a message that "the item you have selected is currently not available from the Apple Store." Is it possible that Apple sold out of the world's fastest laptops?

It's possible, but keep in mind that the world's fastest laptops are also pretty much the world's most expensive laptops-- at $5700 a pop, it's not very likely that Apple actually sold more than they expected. (It's not beyond the realm of possibility, though, given Apple's traditionally wonky forecasting abilities.) We at AtAT consider it much more feasible that the G3 Powerbook was pulled from the Apple Store in preparation for the introduction of the new Wall Street and Main Street line of laptops. Rumor has it that the new Powerbooks will be introduced next week by Steve Jobs at Seybold, so we won't be terribly surprised to find them on the Apple Store as early as Tuesday (though some people have been telling us that they'll be delayed for at least three months!)

Further evidence indicates that the new G3-based Powerbooks wil be showing up very shortly-- O'Grady's PowerPage notes that, indeed, the current Powerbook G3 is officially discontinued as of this coming Tuesday. That happens to be the same day as Jobs' Seybold keynote. Coincidence? Or can we expect to be able to order a $2000 G3-based laptop as early as the middle of next week?

So who's taken a look at the Be operating system lately? Maybe not too many of you, given Be's forced "refocusing" on the Intel architecture. Yes, the BeOS continues to run on Powermacs, but not on the latest Powermacs, the G3's. That's a shame, because the G3's are exactly the kind of machine on which the BeOS would probably do very well, targeted, as it is, at people who use their computers for media tasks such as video and audio editing. And whereas just six months ago, most media coverage of the BeOS discussed its viability as an alternative to the Mac OS for Mac users, these days we mostly see articles like this one in Network Computing, which instead focuses on Be's port to Intel hardware and its potential as a rival for Windows.

Why is Be pushing so hard for Intel compatibility? Well, there's the obvious reason that the vast majority of machines out there have x86's on their motherboards, not PPC's. It's important for any new operating system to try to capture marketing share early on. There's also the fact that the BeOS runs surprisingly well on Intel hardware; while the Pentium family can't touch the PowerPC for raw speed, Be found that the other advantages of the Wintel side (like better memory subsystems, faster bus speeds, multiple processors, etc.) more than made up for any deficiencies in the Pentium itself. But the most important reason that the Powermac G3's don't show up on Be's list of supported systems is that, as detailed in their FAQ, Apple refuses to give them the information they need to make the BeOS run on the G3's.

That's a darn shame, because we at AtAT think that the BeOS could be a real contender in the OS field. We can also understand, though, Apple's current decision to "shut down" alternative Macintosh operating systems just as they shut down alternative Macintosh hardware-- things are still a little too sketchy and Apple needs to get its house in order first. We sincerely hope, however, that once Apple is back on more stable ground, it will consider not only rebooting the Mac clone industry, but also working with Be to support the latest Macs that come out of Cupertino.