There's no question that Steve Jobs has done a lot since taking the helm at Apple a year ago, and one of those accomplishments was to plug the leaks that made our favorite computer company look more like a sieve than an actual business. There was so much "sensitive information" coming out of Cupertino that the only people who didn't know what Apple was doing three months ahead of the game were some Apple managers themselves. Jobs changed all that, by instituting severe penalties for leaking top secret info and by ferreting out the biggest moles by feeding specific information to specific controlled groups and watching to see which info suddenly sprouted up on rumor-mongering web sites like, er, this one.

For a while the strategy seemed to be working fairly well. It wasn't until the surprise unveiling of the iMac-- which nobody seemed to have seen coming-- that we all saw just how well Apple could keep a secret, if they tried really hard. The tables may be turning again, though, as Mac the Knife reports that Apple top brass are hopping mad about the copious Yosemite information hitting the 'net recently. Yosemite, you've likely already heard, is the codename for Apple's next-generation pro-level Power Macs-- not the speed-bumped G3's due in a few weeks, but a whole new beast expected late this year or early next, and rumored to include a slew of tasty features, such as G4 processors on a 100 MHz bus, AGP graphics ports, and built-in USB and FireWire. If what the Knife says is correct, Apple's upset enough about the leaks to have gone and sacked a whole set of contractors who were said to have been the moles.

Understandably, Apple's not thrilled about their extended product plans being as easy for the competition to obtain as the phone number for the local Domino's. Hopefully Apple's engineers aren't overly indiscriminate in what they whisper to outside forces-- or at least we hope that they're a model of discretion. The last thing Apple needs right now is a wild Jobsian firing rampage, leaving only a handful of ex-NeXT programmers and Shelby the janitor still on the payroll. (Especially since we hear that Shelby's got a big mouth-- buy him three beers and he'll tell you all about those weird, pulsating green minitowers churning away in Apple's labs.)

Speaking of Apple product spec leaks, the desktop line isn't the only subject of recent speculation. Ever since Motorola announced its new G3's, which run faster than the current set but draw even less power, folks have been pondering just when these speedy-'n'-cool new chips are going to show up in the PowerBook line. It's not even a question of "if," since the lower power requirements of the new processors translate directly into lower heat output and longer battery life. Apple would be nuts not to switch to the new chips as soon as possible, which is probably determined more by availability than anything else.

O'Grady's PowerPage, that wellspring of all PowerBook knowledge, recently reported a clue as to Apple's laptop plans. Apparently multiple sources are reporting to them that the nigh-unobtainable 292 MHz / 14.1" configuration is being discontinued. What kind of configuration will take its place is anybody's guess, but it's pretty darn likely that it'll include a low-power G3 running at least at 333 MHz, and with the power savings on the new chip, perhaps Apple would build in an even bigger screen. Whatever it turns out to be, we hope that the new configuration will prove easier to build and deliver than the 292/14, which has been sighted less often since introduction than the actual UFO's upon whose technology it is based. (Whoops, we may have said a little too much there...)

So if the 292/14 is really being discontinued, what will become of the 7000 or so backorders for that configuration that still haunt Apple's books? Will Apple "do the right thing" and ship 333/15's to customers instead? And will even such a gesture be able to placate people who have been waiting for three or four months for their computer? (Insert rampant guesswork here.)

A humorous item in PC Magazine about an obsolete Apple //c computer being used as home plate at a Little League baseball diamond has sparked a wave of nostalgia, so bear with us. Waaaay back at the Dawn of Time (which archaeologists refer to by its technical name-- the "Mid-Eighties"), yours truly hoarded the spoils of various odd jobs and the contents of many a birthday card with only one goal in sight: the purchase of a home computer. And even at the tender age of thirteen, I had decided that nothing but an Apple computer would do. When I had finally scraped together enough cash, the family headed on down to the local computer store (where I could be found after school four days out of five, playing on the display models until they kicked me out at closing time) where I shocked the salespeople by transforming into a Paying Customer® and buying a brand new Apple //e.

That //e served me well, and was used for just about everything you could do on a home computer those days, including-- but by no means limited to-- tasks such as writing English papers, programming Newtonian physics demonstrations, generating fractal patterns (albeit very slowly), playing kick-ass games like Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, helping my mother run the restaurant she managed, and producing videos for French class. (When I started to get into animation for video, I found I had to lay out another hard-earned $120 to double the machine's RAM from 64 KB to a mind-bending 128, but other than that, it was a solid workhorse that needed very little upkeep.) When college came, I left the little beast behind, fearing that it would get damaged on the thousand-mile trip. I used the free computers at school instead, which weren't quite as inviting, but they served their purpose. A couple of years later, when money became tight, I sold my beloved //e and watched sadly as it was carted away.

Of course, looking back, it was certainly the right decision; the $1000 (!) I got for that unused system went a long way towards feeding me for the rest of my college career. But a few months ago I downloaded the shareware emulator //e to emulate my old workhorse on my current workhorse, just to remember what it was like to program using six-color graphics and AppleSoft BASIC. And if I can ever dig my old 5 1/4" floppies out of wherever it is they're stored and figure out some way of getting them into my Mac, you can bet that I'll register //e just to dig through all the stuff I produced on my first Apple computer. Or perhaps I'll go whole hog and buy an actual //e, if I find one being used as an oversized base in some sandlot baseball game.