Ah, Rhapsody... What a long, strange trip it's been. That operating system has had such a bizarre and mutating development life, hasn't it? It was about two years ago that Apple announced that Copland, officially named Mac OS 8, had been cancelled outright, and that Apple was then searching around for an outside technology upon which to base its next-generation operating system. A couple of months later, they bought NeXT, expecting to use NeXTstep as the heart of the future Mac OS. A bunch of relatively confusing plans were released, involving Yellow Boxes and Blue Boxes and an "advanced Mac OS look and feel," and most of us said we'd just wait for the thing to be released before trying to fully understand it. Of course, even its release schedule became confusing, with Premiere and Unified versions giving way to Customer Releases 1 and 2, none of which have actually shipped yet, despite the revised release schedule which placed CR1 to be out by early summer. Most recently, of course, CR1 was renamed Mac OS X Server, due at the end of the summer, but still not yet available.

Whew! Confused yet? Just wait, it gets better. Now Don Crabb, the Mac world's closest equivalent to a cross between Ralph Nader and Andy Rooney, reports that Mac OS X Server may have been cancelled outright, just like Copland was. In a MacCentral article, he claims that when several Apple representatives in Europe were approached about Mac OS X Server's release date, they said that "this product was internally cancelled already but that there was no official statement yet." Now, we're hoping for Apple's sake that this statement is false, because canceling Mac OS X Server now would put a pretty hefty strain on the company's credibility. After all, Mac OS X (the real thing) isn't due for about another year yet, and there are lots of Mac customers out there who could benefit from a server OS right now.

On the other hand, Mac OS Rumors has a completely different take on the Mac OS X Server sitch: they claim that the operating system's first (and very likely only) customer release has gone "golden master," meaning that it's ready for duplication. That's sort of the antithesis of being cancelled. at least in some respects. Several sources report that Mac OS X Server is ready to go, but since Mac OS 8.5 was a little late and didn't ship until a few days ago, the release of Mac OS X Server has been very quietly held off so as not to steal 8.5's thunder. In this game it all comes down to whom you believe. Our personal feeling is that Mac OS X Server will be released sometime in November. But why would you believe us?

Finally! After months and months of waiting, the official trial has started in the "Redmond Justice" case, kicking off the new fall litigation season. Microsoft and the Department of Justice squared off for their first day in court, and the buzz is that the cast definitely hasn't disappointed the viewers. Even superstar Bill Gates made an appearance-- or at least his name did, and since Bill pretty much consists of his name and his money, we couldn't expect a whole lot more. (Actually, given just how much money he really has, we take that back-- it is a whole lot more.) A Computer Reseller News article has the details.

Justice lawyer David Boies fired his first volley right at Gates on the first day of the trial, aiming right at Gate's pre-recorded testimony that he was not aware of any meeting between Microsoft and Netscape bigwigs that allegedly took place on June 21st of 1995. Or rather, he wasn't aware of it at the time; he claims he only found out about it when he read about it in the Wall Street Journal well after the fact. But Boies produced an email message that Gates had written the month before the infamous meeting, which supposedly reveals Gates' intention to cut a deal with Netscape so that Microsoft would retain the browser market for Windows users, while Netscape would get everyone else. Uh-oh!

Too bad Gates wasn't present to explain himself. Lawyer Stephen Houck went so far as to state on-record that Gates revealed a "lack of intestinal fortitude" for not appearing before the court in person. Ouch! And this is only Day 1. Hang onto your seats, folks, because the season's off to a great start...

By now most of AtAT's faithful viewers are aware of the running gag known as "Apple products in CompUSA's Sunday circulars." It's harder to find Mac hardware in one of those than it is to find an actual peanut in a modern box of Cracker Jacks. But even wrong information is better than no info at all, as faithful viewer Kareem Kazkaz makes clear. He pointed out an "interesting" description of the iMac at CompUSA's web site. The description has since been amended to list the standard specs we all know and love, but before it was changed apparently the particular iMac model described was listed as having a 350 MHz Pentium II processor. Holy hybrid, Batman!

Ah, but you probably thought the Pentium-powered iMac was just a humorous mistake, didn't you? Or did all those little alarm bells go off in your head warning you that there's more here than meets the eye? It's no secret that rumors about Motorola possibly cancelling further PowerPC development has some Apple watchers nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop, and while Motorola execs strongly deny that any such move is in the works, you should know by now never to take an exec's statement too seriously. Yes, it's a long shot, but if Motorola were to drop the PPC, that would leave IBM as the sole developer and supplier of every chip at the heart of every Apple product. A sketchy situation, at best; what if IBM were to duck out, too?

Nope, that Pentium-fueled iMac is the real deal, cooked up in Apple's secret underground labs as a "Plan B" in case the PowerPC goes kaput. It runs a souped-up version of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" operating system, which appears to be Mac OS 8.5 rehosted on the x86 architecture. However, this "alternative" iMac was supposed to be kept under wraps, only to be unveiled if circumstances demanded it. Instead, somebody mixed up the work orders, and somehow specs for the secret iMac design (see, the "i" really stands for "iNtel") found their way into CompUSA's marketing department. Whoopsie! But black-suited Apple agents have "remedied" the problem, paying a little visit to CompUSA headquarters and "persuading" them to remove the Pentium II specs. Reports are filtering in that the two agents in question looked remarkably like Jesse "The Body" Ventura and game show host Alex Trebek, but hey, you can't believe everything you hear.