The Register's recent assertion that Apple is hooking up with Intel to hedge their bets against a sudden horrible PowerPC death touched off a firestorm of debate. They claimed that the only thing preventing IBM and Motorola from just chucking the chip's development out the window was "contractual obligations," and that PowerPC's future is shaky enough for Apple to start forging alternate plans based on Intel's increasingly-late 64-bit Merced processor. Needless to say, a massive cry arose from the Mac community-- part of it was surprise, part incredulity, part sheer indignation, and part horror. But if you found it easy to shrug off The Register's rumor as mere fiction just because it came from a single source, you may find it just a little tougher to ignore once you read their follow-up story.

Apparently, The Register's source for this information is a "senior figure within Intel's Architecture Group," who claims that Apple is indeed working with them on 64-bit versions of Mac OS X for Merced, because IBM and Motorola have such different ideas about where the PowerPC should head next, developmentally speaking. (We've already seen the beginnings of that schism, most overtly with AltiVec-- Motorola digs it, IBM does not.) Basically, Motorola sees PowerPC becoming an embedded systems chip, while IBM sees it more as a server processor-- and neither of them really see its focus being Mac systems. Does that mean that Apple's really looking to migrate to Intel instead? No, but it's less outrageously improbable than it might seem at first. After all, Mac OS X Server for Intel already exists, albeit only within Apple's labs. What if Apple really did release X Server for Merced-- X Server only, not Mac OS X-- as a direct competitor for Windows 2000? It probably wouldn't hurt their hardware sales much, and it might really gain Mac OS X Server some serious exposure and market share. After all, a Merced-based server running Mac OS X Server could still NetBoot a few dozen PowerPC-based iMacs. It's all conjecture, of course, but it could happen.

Unless you believe Apple Insider. They were skeptical enough of The Register's broad, sweeping statements in the original article (like how Apple was expected to drop PowerPC completely by 2003) that they went straight to the top and asked Steve Jobs. According to the Big Guy Himself, rumors of migration to Intel technology are "total fiction." So it's up to you to decide whom to believe. Personally, we wouldn't be all that surprised if Apple is at least pretending to be talking to Intel in hopes of spurring IBM and Motorola to come to an agreement on the PowerPC's future-- but that's just us being our usual lovable paranoid selves.

We must admit, we're more than a little amused by Diamond's latest "special edition" Rio MPEG-3 player. The Rio is a solid-state unit about the size of a couple of PCMCIA cards stacked together that stores and plays MP3 music. It was, we think, the first of its kind to hit the market, and this latest version is pretty slick. It's got 64 MB of built-in flash RAM, which is enough for about an hour of almost-CD-quality music, and it can take additional 16 MB and 32 MB flash cards for additional storage. It only weighs a hair under two and a half ounces. And most significantly, it sports a distinctly iMac-like look, with its "new transparent teal case design." Think different, or something.

What's particularly galling about the new Rio is that, even though it looks like an iMac, it's still not Mac-compatible. The last we'd heard, Diamond claimed they're still evaluating whether or not the Mac market is big enough to justify making a Mac-compatible Rio. Well, let's see-- if a computer released eight months ago has been so darn popular that you steal its look for your latest PC-only product, yeah, we think the market's probably big enough. Of course, they'd have to make a USB-interface version, but given how many iMacs are out there, and the likely boost in popularity that MP3 will get on the Mac platform once QuickTime 4 hits the streets, we'd think Diamond would want to be ahead of the curve instead of stalled out behind it.

On the other hand, we've got to wonder if people who buy iMacs for $1199 or less are also going to want to shell out $250 for a matching portable music player that only holds an hour of music unless you add additional flash cards at $99 for 32 MB. Hmmm. Still, we suppose the option would be nice...

Those wacky MIT students are at it again... Only a couple of weeks after building iMacs out of Jell-O, they're back in the news for selling open source baked goods. According to a quick blurb on ZDNN, some students used Bill Gates' impending visit to the school as inspiration for creative fundraising. They camped outside the auditorium soon to be blessed with Gates' presence and set up shop selling "open source pies." While the media will cost you, the source code is free-- they're handing out the recipe for kitchen-bound developers to alter and improve.

Gates, whom many see as the very antithesis of the whole "free for all" open-source movement, is visiting the school to help celebrate the 35th anniversary of MIT's computer center. Recently Microsoft has been making some tentative noises about releasing their death-grip on the Windows source code and opening it up to outside developers. The Open Source Community, however, seems more than a bit suspicious about what they expect will be Microsoft's lukewarm and half-assed approach, if their open letter to the company is any indication. (Interestingly enough, several of the points in the letter could just as easily have been directed at Apple, who have left some pretty significant chunks of Mac OS X Server out of the whole Darwin thing so far.) Anyway, the idea of selling open source pies in preparation for a Gatesian visit appeals to us in a major way.

There's no word yet what group is getting the proceeds from the pies (we suspect it's SIPB), but we hope they make a bundle from this imaginative enterprise. Details are so sketchy, we're not even sure if Gates' visit is imminent or if it already happened-- but if his visit hasn't occurred yet, given his recent turbulent history with pies, someone should probably tell him that the student body is armed and dangerous. Heck, we wouldn't be surprised if several students are already hard at work modifying the open-source recipe-- not for better flavor, flakier crust, or longer shelf life, but for improved aerodynamics and heftier splatter factor. Hey, we wonder if anyone's working on flavor plug-ins for Blueberry, Grape, Lime, Tangerine, and Strawberry fillings?