Apparently the supply of Power Mac G3's is drying up faster than Apple ever expected. Whoops! Guess that's what happens when you take a fantabulous product that's already in fairly short supply, stop making any new ones, and then issue price cuts so generous they serve as a great learning example for fledgling home appliance salesmen who need to learn the meaning of the phrase "insanely low prices." Amid widespread reports that Ingram Micro, one of Apple's two distributors in the U.S., is fresh out of any Power Mac G3's whatsoever, the picture looks grim for people in the market for a Power Mac, as the speed-bumped models aren't expected until Seybold early next month...

...But wait! Up in the sky! Faster than a speeding bullet, yadda yadda yadda, here come the speed-bumped G3's, now due to arrive in early-mid-August. (Not to be confused with mid-early-August, which is where we are now.) At least, that's the scoop according to Reality, who reports that the apparent shortage of Power Macs may have forced Apple to bump up the release date to August 11th or 12th-- less than a week from now. So for those of you hoping to buy a Power Mac in the short term, you've got a tough decision to make: will you snap up one of those last 266 MHz A/V minitowers your dealer has for under $2000, or will you opt for one of the new systems, like the 333 MHz minitower complete with 64 MB of RAM, an 8 GB hard drive, video in and out, and a built-in Zip drive all for $2599?

Either way, that's a whole lotta Mac for the buck. Between professionals and gamers jonesing for a new Power Mac and the rest of the universe anxiously awaiting the arrival of the iMac, the remainder of 1998 is shaping up to be a huge sales period for Apple. Now if only they can supply enough units to meet demand...

The drama of "Redmond Justice II" continues, as Microsoft argues that it had the idea for an Internet browser long before its rival Netscape even existed. Extensive details may be found in a New York Times article.

Ignoring for a second whether or not Microsoft did come up with the idea for a browser first, we're not entirely sure we see the logic in this argument anyway. Just because Microsoft may not have planned Internet Explorer entirely as a method to eliminate Netscape as competition in the Internet arena, that doesn't mean they didn't plan to use IE to crush Netscape once both browsers were available. Whether or not they planned these moves from the start, they still gave away IE when Netscape was charging for its browser, they still worked to port IE to Unix (when none of its other products were being ported to that OS), and they still required all PC manufacturers to pre-load IE on all shipping systems under pain of having their Windows license revoked. Whether or not Netscape as a company existed at the time that Microsoft was tossing around vague ideas for how they were going to rule the Internet seems hardly relevant. But we'll see if this latest tactic works when Microsoft heads into court in a month's time.

By the way, AtAT feels it's our duty to inform you all that we came up with the idea of an Internet browser back in fourth-grade summer camp, back when Space Invaders was all the rage and the word "Internet" had yet to be coined. And we've got a vague pencil sketch on the back of a Denny's napkin to prove it. Naturally, we expect both Microsoft and Netscape to begin immediate royalty payments directly into our Swiss bank account.

Several of you wrote in to ask why AtAT hadn't yet addressed what Mac the Knife calls a "key defection" from the Macintosh Way. We speak, of course, of the ubiquitous and once-quirky Kinko's copy shops, and the rumors that they have decided to eliminate all Macs from their service departments over the course of the next couple of years. The reason we hadn't mentioned it thus far is because we were hoping for an official denial from Kinko's themselves, but since none has yet materialized, it seems that this rumor may just be true after all.

According to the whispers around the water cooler, all Macs at the 850 Kinko's full-service locations will be phased out and Windows systems will be brought in to replace them. The truly scary bit is that apparently Kinko's plans to install a "combination of Adobe and Microsoft publishing tools" on each machine. (You can almost hear the simultaneous résumé-updating at service bureaus worldwide, as staff there decide that they'd rather switch careers than have to deal with the possibility of more jobs coming in that were authored in Microsoft Publisher. Eeeeyuuwwww.)

What really kills us about this rumored decision is that there's never been a better time for Kinko's to start adding more Macs to its service departments. The iMac seems almost made for Kinko's, despite its consumer leanings; stick a few on some empty desks and plug them into the store's Ethernet network, plug in some Imation Superdisks and USB Zip drives, upgrade the RAM to 96 MB or so and the VRAM to 4MB in each, and you've got some fairly rockin' DTP terminals for all of $1900 or less. Those, plus a few full-fledged Power Mac G3's with large monitors, should be a stunning combination. If you feel that Kinko's is making a big mistake in deciding to eliminate all of its Macs, stay tuned to this channel, because over the weekend we'll be posting a petition you can sign to make your voice heard.