Still more news comes trickling in about the iMac's introduction last weekend. ComputerWare, the ten-store retail chain in California that seems to wind up getting quoted in just about every news story about the iMac's big launch, apparently issued a press release revealing some preliminary data about just who was buying up all those iMacs. And while we haven't been able to locate the press release on PRNewswire, we'll assume the copy we received in our mailbox is genuine, seeing as it comes from ComputerWare's own veep of marketing, Paul Ramirez...

According to the release, ComputerWare conducted an exit poll of 500 customers who bought an iMac. They've finished tabulating the first third of the responses, and the results are encouraging, to say the least; we had assumed that almost all of the iMacs sold during the premiere weekend would be to existing Mac users who simply couldn't resist the latest insanely great computer from Apple. But according to ComputerWare's data, almost 15% of their iMac customers were buying the first computer for their home. In addition, of those who were buying an iMac to replace an existing machine, a fairly respectable 13% were replacing a Wintel system, not a Mac. That indicates good things to come in terms of market share numbers. And as time passes, word of mouth spreads, the $100 million advertising campaign does its thing, and the fanatical Macophiles among us have all long since already gotten our iMacs, we would expect an increase in the percentage of iMac buyers who are either first-time buyers or soon-to-be-former-Wintel-users.

That's all great news, since a lot of people guessed that the iMac was appealing only to existing Mac users, which would be fine in terms of Apple making a healthy short-term profit, but it would do nothing to ensure the future of the Mac platform by growing the installed base. Thanks to ComputerWare's exit poll, we have some indication that the iMac may be expanding the Mac installed base after all. By the way, when we were digging around on ComputerWare's site to try to find a page containing the press release, to our surprise, we noticed that ComputerWare links to AtAT on their news page. That means all of you AtAT junkies in the Bay Area should give them your money. ;-)

Reports of problems with the new iMacs have been surprisingly scarce, and it seems like Apple did a great job of releasing a solid and reliable product. However, we've been having one little problem with ours, and while at first we thought it was perhaps only happening to us, an Inter@ctive Week Online article implies otherwise. It appears that iMacs have trouble making and keeping dialup connections with internet service providers other than EarthLink, which is the iMac's default provider.

The symptoms as reported by Katie, AtAT's resident fact checker and Goddess of Minutiae, are that she often must try four or five times to connect to MacConnect, because the Remote Access control panel typically gets as far as "Starting Network Protocols" and then just sits there forever, eventually requiring her to click "Cancel" and try again. And when she is able to connect, it's not uncommon for the connection to be dropped after only a few minutes of use. This behavior is consistent across several MacConnect dialin numbers. So in a way, we're relieved to read that we're not the only poor shmoes with this problem-- in fact, MacConnect is listed specifically as one ISP who has gotten numerous calls from iMac owners about connection difficulties (though the problem is by no means limited to MacConnect).

Whoops! An Internet Macintosh that doesn't like to be connected to the Internet! But at least now that we know we're not the only ones who are thusly afflicted, we can rest assured that Apple's working on the problem, and will supply a new modem initialization script (or whatever might ease connection issues) shortly. Also, if EarthLink subscribers are in fact immune to this situation, as the article implies, at least the new users who bought an iMac to get on the 'net and signed up via Apple's Internet Setup Assistant are doing just fine-- it's just we existing non-EarthLink-using net-surfers who are feeling the pinch. Still, the irony is not lost on us.

Oh look, Microsoft's won another appeal in its battle against the Department of Justice. This time, an appellate court overturned Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling that the DoJ's pretrial deposition of Bill Gates should be open to the public. Instead, the depositions will be taken in private, thus severely limiting the entertainment potential of the proceedings. You can read all about it in the Washington Post, if you forgot to tune in.

Is anyone else picking up on a recurring pattern in the ongoing "Redmond Justice" show? It seems to us that the writers have used the same plot device over and over again: Judge Jackson rules against Microsoft in some way, and then an appellate court overturns his ruling. We first saw this happen back in the first season, when the Judge issued his infamous preliminary injunction requiring Microsoft to stop forcing its Windows licensees to preinstall Internet Explorer on their PC's if they didn't want to. That injunction was overturned on appeal last June. Then there was the issue of Lawrence Lessig being appointed as a special master in the case-- again, reversed upon appeal last February. And now this public vs. private deposition appeal... Been there, seen that. Are we watching reruns?

Anyway, the time sucked up by Microsoft's appeal has prompted a delay in the trial itself, which has been moved from September 8th to September 23rd, according to the San Jose Mercury News. But then again, we all know that the outcome of the trial isn't what's significant-- it's the appeal that comes later that we should be waiting for. If you ask us, "Redmond Justice" needs new writers, because the plot is definitely getting stale...