It's time for another big Apple announcement. According to Mac OS Rumors, Steve Jobs has invited the leaders of Mac user groups to attend a "milestone" meeting in Cupertino on this coming Wednesday, May 6th. The topic is the "fruits of [Apple's] labor" since that last big November 10th media circus, so it could conceivably be a long day...

As for what exactly will be announced, Rumors assumes that Apple will formally introduce the new Powerbook G3 series, previously known as Wall Street and Main Street. That unveiling won't come a bit too soon, given that the original Powerbook G3 has been conspicuously absent from the Apple Store for several weeks, now, and many of us expected an introduction way back at Steve's Seybold keynote. In addition, Steve will probably take the wraps off of the educational version of the Apple Store, which will give schools the same build-to-order access that the rest of us have had. Further announcements are likely but their topics are entirely a matter of conjecture. We at AtAT, for example, are hoping for the confession that Apple is indeed planning on releasing a $700 home computer-- but we sure as heck aren't holding our collective breath.

Now let's see... Steve Jobs promised us "surprises every 90 days." 90 days back from May 6th was, um, about the beginning of February. There were definitely quite a few surprises back then, probably the biggest of which was the Snail ad. (Yes, it only debuted three months ago. How time flies, eh?) But there have been plenty of smaller surprises since, too, like the death of the Newton (okay, maybe that wasn't exactly a surprise) and the second quarterly profit. It appears that Steve's living up to his promise, and then some. We just hope the May 6th event doesn't get as overhyped as the November 10th one was. You most likely recall those November rumors about everything from the unveiling of the Mac NC, to a takeover by Sun-- and "all" we got instead were the G3 machines and the build-to-order Apple Store.

Twenty-six high-tech companies like Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, etc. are attempting to strong-arm the Justice Department into keeping their mitts off of Windows 98. The Washington Post has details.

Now, faithful viewer Jeff Barbose has an interesting perspective on this letter: "Doesn't that really SERVE the government (state & DoJ) by stating flat-out that MS controls almost all of the industry? That its whims are further up the ONLY foodchain than the primary businesses of others?" Well, yes, it does. Think about it-- if Microsoft weren't a monopoly, why would Intel be shaking in its boots about a possible delay of Windows 98? As far as we know, the only ones still claiming that Microsoft isn't a monopoly are Microsoft themselves.

So here we've got twenty-six industry players saying they'll lose milions if Windows 98 is delayed; of course, you may recall that in early March, attorneys general of twenty-seven states in the U.S. filed a joint brief supporting the Justice Department's actions against the Redmond Giant. We'll leave it up to you to decide amongst yourselves which pulls more weight. On a related note, we at AtAT are betting that Microsoft is secretly hoping for a Justice-mandated delay, so they can have more time to eliminate some of the more embarrassing bugs from the operating system before the public chokes on it.

It's springtime here in the northern hemisphere, and we don't know about you, but spring always makes us want to spend money. We think it's because we've finally suppressed the horrors (and paid the bills) of the previous holiday buying carnage, and also because tax refunds put a little extra scratch in our pockets. So if you're anything like us, and you're looking at a fat refund check and considering converting it into a nice new G3 system, Apple's making the decision even easier for you. Now, in a new spring promotion, if you buy any Power Macintosh G3, you get your choice of either a 32 MB RAM boost or a copy of Connectix VirtualPC 2.0 for free.

Nice to have choices, isn't it? Given that VirtualPC costs about $150 and 32 MB of RAM is only maybe $80 or so, you should probably opt for VirtualPC if you have any need at all to run Windows software. Personally, we've got all the software we need on the Mac side, so we'd probably go for the extra RAM, but the VirtualPC offer could be a real boon for corporate buyers.

For those of you who are more interested in buying software than hardware, there's also a promotion whereby you can get $30 back if you buy Mac OS 8.1 and Microsoft Office 98 together. We at AtAT doubt that anyone who wasn't already going to buy both packages would be swayed by a measly $30 (especially given that the total cost would be over $500), but hey, an extra $30 is always nice. Go out and buy yourself a couple of Zip disks or something.