It's one of life's sad little truths: when faced with a fork in the road, sometimes you make a choice you regret later. And as far as regrets go, Apple seems to have more than its fair share. There's the way they missed the chance to license the Mac OS before the whole world went Wintel. Then there's the way they licensed it too late and in such a brain-damaged, sales-cannibalizing manner. There's the years of development and millions of dollars poured into Copland before the project was scrapped. And most recently, there's the whole move to the G4 processor...

Okay, yeah, sure the G4 is one smokin' little chip. Gigaflops, and all that. Supercomputer performance. Whatever. There are a couple of serious problems, though, that are really starting to bite Apple in the behind. For one thing, that supercomputer-level performance really only kicks in when an application has been written specifically to take advantage of the G4's "Velocity Engine"-- and there are far fewer of those specialized apps than we'd like to see. And for another thing, there's this whole "stuck at 500 MHz" nonsense. We don't care how fast the G4 may in fact be; Apple's getting creamed at the Joe Shmoe marketing level, where Windows systems are available at twice Apple's fastest clock speed.

What really hurts, though, is that while Motorola is lagging with the G4, IBM is quietly cranking the G3 up to ridiculous new levels of performance. Velocity Engine aside, a 500 MHz G4 is reportedly roughly equivalent in speed to a 600 MHz G3. Well, guess what? According to The Register, IBM has just demoed its new 750CX and 750CXe G3 processors, which are expected to hit 700 MHz in the not-too-distant future. Which means it's entirely possible that the fastest G3 might soon be faster than the fastest G4-- and not just in terms of clock speed. (Yes, Motorola is supposed to have the G4 Max out by then, but we've officially adopted a policy of considering any Motorola processor to be vapor until it's actually shipping. That whole "G4 Speed Dump" fiasco was just too harsh a burn.)

So could Apple successfully switch back to G3s in its professional desktop Macs? Not likely; all that hype about the G4 being the future of computing was a textbook example of bridge-burning at its finest. To "downgrade" from the G4 to the G3 would be a PR disaster of truly biblical proportions-- we're talking "ten plagues" kind of disaster. So no, we figure that Apple's going to have to keep its fingers crossed and hope that Motorola can crank the G4 up to the performance level it deserves. If everything stays on schedule (ha!), early next year we may have dual- and quad-processor G4 Max systems running the symmetrically-multiprocessing Mac OS X-- giving customers, say, "1.4 GHz" or even "2.8 GHz" Macs to play with. We hate the "Wait 'Til Next Year!" game as much as you do, but hey, if you've been following Apple for any length of time, you're used to it by now.

Now just how the heck did this slip by us? Things have gone wacky at Imatec, the company that sued Apple for patent infringement in the development of ColorSync. In case you've forgotten, Imatec (which we assumed to consist entirely of CEO Dr. Hanoch Shalit and maybe his secretary) was trying for $1.1 billion, with the possibility of triple damages because Apple allegedly infringed Imatec's patents on purpose. The case ended a few months ago with the judge damn near laughing the suit out of court, ruling not only that Apple did not infringe those patents, but also that the patents in question didn't even belong to Shalit/Imatec in the first place. It was a real hoot, matched only in hilarity by Hanoch's incessant inane press releases issued almost daily during the course of the case.

Well, here's the latest from Imatecland: as faithful viewer Jesse Rusak pointed out, the company issued one of its incomparable press releases about a week ago announcing that it was buying another company. We know, we know-- you could have knocked us over with a feather. Considering Imatec had never made a product or actually generated any real income over the course of its entire existence, we couldn't help but wonder just what kind of company it could buy; did the kid who mows Hanoch's lawn incorporate, or something? But as a matter of fact, Imatec's buying some outfit called Sequel Technology Corporation for "15 million shares" of Imatec stock. (That's worth roughly $15 million.) In addition, Imatec will take on Sequel's liabilities (about $2 million), lend them $500,000 to "repay certain outstanding indebtedness," and-- here's the kicker-- Hanoch is resigning.

That's right, our old buddy Hanoch is out on the street. Don't cry too hard for him, though-- his termination package includes $500,000 and "all of Imatec's existing intellectual property." You know, like those patents. The ones he didn't own in the first place. In any event, he's walking away with a cool half mil in his back pocket, so he's not exactly hurting for cash. And between his extraordinary natural talent and wealth of experience in the realm of crafting press releases and his flair for publicity (like say, suing a huge, visible company for billions of dollars in a transparent grab for cash and attention), we have to assume he should have no trouble landing a top-notch job in the PR industry.

Whatever's left of Imatec, then, is presumably getting out of the color management business while the getting's good; Hanoch's taking the intellectual property, and Sequel is entirely an "Internet Resource Management" company, whatever the heck that is. Does this mean we can safely assume that Imatec's appeal of the billion-dollar lawsuit has gone nowhere? Can we close the book on this sordid chapter in Apple's legal history? Or is Hanoch just going to go set up another "company" and give it another try? After all, the best villains always return...

For those of you who were always complaining that "Redmond Justice" was too slow-moving, apparently the writers got the message. It's true that the action has dragged at times throughout the case's two years on the air, but the latest installment of Microsoft's epic antitrust battle was a whirlwind of activity crammed into a single episode that made our heads spin. And it's not even Sweeps Month.

For those who missed it (like, if you blinked), here's the skinny. As you saw in previous episodes, Judge Jackson ruled that Microsoft should be split in two for having violated antitrust laws on numerous occasions. While the ruling gave the company four months to come up with a plan for the breakup, certain "conduct remedies" were to commence in ninety days. Microsoft immediately filed a request for a stay of the ruling, hoping to avoid any changes in its business practices until the Appeals Court heard the case.

Now, this is where the show really poured on the speed. On Tuesday, according to a Newsbytes article, the Judge rejected Microsoft's stay request, saying that he'd "reserve such a decision until Microsoft actually files an appeal." Microsoft had previously insisted that it would not file the appeal until the stay issue had been resolved. See what's going on here? It's no secret that Microsoft wants the appeal to be heard by the Court of Appeals, which has twice sided with it on antitrust matters in the past. The government, on the other hand, wants Judge Jackson to invoke a little-used provision of the Sherman Antitrust Act and kick the appeal upstairs directly to the Supreme Court-- and Jackson seems on board with that plan. But the government couldn't file a motion to expedite the appeal until Microsoft actually filed for one-- hence, no Microsoft appeal was filed. But with Jackson refusing to resolve the stay request until an appeal is on the books, the Redmond company's stall tactics were backfiring; sure, the government couldn't try to involve the Supreme Court, but without a stay, Microsoft's time was running out on the ninety days before the conduct remedies kicked in.

And then suddenly, from out of nowhere, BAM! Microsoft filed for an appeal before the government knew what hit it. According to a CNET article, the Court of Appeals was ready with an answer-- a resounding "we'll take it." And what's more, the Appeals Court is adopting a fast-track schedule of its own; usually the case would first be reviewed by a three-judge panel before moving on to being heard by a full panel of judges. In the case of "Redmond Justice," however, the three-judge step is being skipped completely-- a move legal experts are calling "unprecedented."

That's a major score for Microsoft; the government scrambled to file its motion for the Supreme Court end-run, but now that the Appeals Court has agreed to hear the case (and in its own expedited fashion), the chances of the highest court in the land wanting to butt in right now are slim to none. The very fact that the Appeals Court worked so quickly to put the kibosh the whole "straight to the Supreme Court" plan indicates that Microsoft is facing a much more sympathetic set of judges this time around. Could this be where the tables get turned? Stay tuned.