iMac Day has come and gone, and only the memories (and the balloons, t-shirts, posters, iMacfied web sites, billboards, TV and radio ads, and magazine pullouts-- oh, and iMacs) remain. We hope you all had a pleasant day, and those of you who are fortunate enough to be the proud owner of a new iMac have reason to be beaming with joy. From all reports, the events went swimmingly well, and resellers report record interest in Apple's new consumer machine. Nobody is happier about that fact than we are (okay, maybe Apple's just as happy-- but it's a close race), especially since as of Friday night, things looked like a potential disaster. It wasn't just AtAT's dealer who hadn't yet received their allotted shipment of iMacs; several resellers found that their iMacs were simply missing in action. And with less than twelve hours to go before the scheduled events.

The problem, according to a MacInTouch report, affected primarily those systems sent by Ingram Micro (one of Apple's two distributors) to dealers via Eagle USA Shipping. Now, we don't deal much with the shipping business, but we've got to admit, we've never heard of Eagle. The only reason we're hearing about them now is because they were responsible for getting the iMacs through to the front lines, but something went very, very wrong. Apparently Sacramento airport was completely clogged with iMacs, and there simply weren't enough flights out of the city to carry that many iMacs to their destinations. (So in hindsight, we suppose Apple did make "enough" iMacs for the rollout-- any more wouldn't have shown up anyway.)

Many smaller dealers finally wound up getting their iMacs by late Saturday afternoon, though some won't even have them until Monday. AtAT's dealer, a model of stamina and grace, managed to get theirs delivered by 3AM on the day of the event, by making several heated phone calls and refusing to take no for an answer. We're glad they stuck to it, because otherwise we would have had to change our plans completely. It's nice having friends in small dealerships.

Forget Year 2000 compliance; Windows 98 isn't even fully Year 1999-compliant. According to a ZDNet report, Microsoft has acknowleged an "issue" where Windows 98 computers rebooted during a specific split-second just before midnight of January 1st will either "leap forward two days or fall behind a day." Happy New Year!

Now, since the bug (er, issue) only affects people who will reboot their systems in some less-than-a-second window between 11:59 and midnight of the new year, it's unlikely to cause any real havoc. Indeed, it should only affect those who are rebooting their computer just before midnight instead of celebrating the new year, and some would argue that those people pretty much deserve a date bug to make them re-evaluate their life choices. (Then again, those of you who aren't rebooting your computers, but instead are getting blitzed and making fools of yourselves at some party may experience the same "What day is it?" phenomenon the next morning-- only without a computer.) In fact, Microsoft will probably have a fix out by the time this episode is broadcast.

But what this bug issue really illustrates is that Microsoft still can't seem to write clean code. How hard is it to get a date algorithm right? Microsoft's OS has gotten so ubiquitous that they don't have to do things correctly, because people will buy the product anyway. Simply amazing. For those of you who recall author Douglas Adams' proposed Apple slogan at the last MacWorld Expo, perhaps we should amend it slightly. His original version was "Apple Computer: They may not have gotten everything right, but at least they knew the century was going to end." In light of the new Microsoft issue (hey, got it right on the first try that time!), we propose changing that last bit to "at least they knew the year was going to end."

Was it a case of alien abduction, or just a Hoffa-style joint hit by the Mafia and the government working together? Either way, the new Power Macintosh G3/366 was scheduled to make a formal appearance last Wednesday to take its position as the new speed leader in Apple's lineup, only to vanish without a trace. Stranger still, key players in the Mac game are vigorously denying that the system ever existed at all. A MacWEEK article has more on the mysterious disappearance.

If you weren't completely distracted by iMac-mania (which now appears calculated from the start to divert attention away from the G3/366's sudden departure), you may have noticed that several Mac news sources, including the typically deadly-accurate MacInTouch and MacNN, had been predicting Apple's impending release of speed-bumped Power Macs for several days, including configurations and estimated prices. At the time, there was little doubt that the new King of Speed would be a G3 system running at 366 MHz. On Wednesday, multiple resellers even listed the system as being for sale, indicating that they had received official information from Apple about such a configuration. But when Apple formally announced the new machines later that day, the G3/366 was nowhere to be found. Suddenly the configuration disappeared from all vendors' price lists, and when asked about the change, resellers would only say "no comment." And Apple's official word on the subject was only that "a 366 MHz machine has not been announced," which statement was given after the official Apple spokesperson (garbed entirely in black and wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses) flashed a bright light at the gathered reporters, who nodded confusedly and filed out of the room.

MacInTouch had a relatively benign explanation for the omission of a 366 MHz system: reportedly Mitch Mandich, Apple's Czar of All Things Marketing, pulled the plug on the G3/366 announcement based on concerns about the availability of processors running at that speed. But both the 333 and 366 MHz chips are expected to be available in September, and third-party processor upgrade manufacturers like MacTell and Sonnet have announced products based on the new processors. All we can say is, we fully expect the G3/366 to make its appearance sometime next month-- as it comes stumbling naked out of the woods, with no memory of the past several weeks and sporting a small puncture wound behind its right ear. Stay tuned.