The repercussions of Apple's "lean years" continue to ripple forth from the past to bum us out in the present. When we think back to May of last year, or whenever it was that Apple announced that huge round of cuts, probably the project we mourned for most of all was OpenDoc. At the time, we had only recently discovered just how cool that component-based, document-centric way of computing really was. But it was way too far ahead of its time, and in general people weren't ready to let go of the traditional "applications and documents" way of thinking. And so not many developers embraced OpenDoc, and those that did found that not many people were buying their products. As sad as it was, we later agreed that it was in Apple's best interests-- and therefore in the best interests of the continuation of the Macintosh platform-- that OpenDoc be "Steved."

However, the people who were using OpenDoc were mostly using it with a free Apple product called Cyberdog. Cyberdog was a collection of OpenDoc parts that allowed the basic integration of Internet objects right into one's documents; you could, for instance, throw a live web page of your company's current stock price into the middle of your quarterly report, or embed a live ftp connection right next to it to allow the dragging of remote files to your local hard disk. It's the kind of thing that's sort of hard to explain-- which is one reason that OpenDoc failed-- but once you try it, it really opens your eyes to the possibilities. Cyberdog, however, was originally intended to be an OpenDoc demo, not a full-featured suite of Internet software; third parties were expected to write replacement parts for Cyberdog. For instance, early on, Netscape had committed to releasing an OpenDoc version of its Navigator web browser that would replace Cyberdog's relatively anemic browser component. This, of course, never came to pass, but Apple did a respectable job of pumping up Cyberdog's features itself, and to this day it actually remains a very capable-- and fun-- suite of Internet software.

Unfortunately, it appears that Cyberdog's days are numbered. According to MacCentral, Apple has officially pulled the plug on the Cyberdog web site, and the software is conspicuously absent from the Mac OS 8.5 CD-ROM. Unfortunately, as with Newton, Apple seems strangely reluctant to release or sell the technology to a third party to continue its development, but there is a petition available if you'd like to see Cyberdog kept alive and thriving by a willing company named Kantara. Sybie, we hardly knew ye...

Hey, if you're at all like us, you were bummed (but not at all surprised) to learn that Bill Gates was not on the "Redmond Justice" witness list this season. Seeing the world's richest man on the stand in a federal antitrust trial would have been a fantastic ratings grabber, but presumably Gates' asking price was too high, and the producers had to pass. They weren't above using some creative editing to include him in the season premiere last Monday, however; excerpts of Gate's taped deposition, recorded last August, were played in court as part of the Department of Justice's opening arguments. It's a mild twist on that patented television move of padding an episode with clips of previously-shown material, because Gates' deposition has yet to be seen by the public. But that's all going to change.

Presumably the producers are a little disappointed with the ratings of "Redmond Justice," which started out incredibly strong on Monday and Tuesday, but declined sharply through the rest of the week as Microsoft attorney John Warden got bogged down in boring factual minutiae and an apparent desire to keep Netscape head dude Jim Barksdale on the stand until one of them drops dead of old age. We all should have known that Warden isn't much of a performer; sure, his shouting matches with Barksdale were entertaining enough, but altogether too brief-- and what's with the low-tech transparencies on the overhead projector? We expected more from Microsoft's famed legal department.

So the producers have taken action. According to an Associated Press article, next week's episodes of "Redmond Justice" will see the return of Bill Gates, albeit once more in video form only. The government is planning to play eight hours of his deposition in court, after which the tape will be made public. Great move! That'll bring back the viewers. After all, video is the next best thing to being there. Microsoft isn't too pleased with the idea, however; spokesman Mark Murray claims that the use of taped footage of His Mightiness is merely a cheap "effort to demonize... a visionary and innovator." But Mark, we were talking about Bill Gates, here. C'mon, keep up with the rest of us.

We're constantly amazed at just how resourceful the Macintosh community can be. After all, here we have the iMac, which is certainly one of the least expandable Macs ever produced, and yet Mac geeks all over the world have been figuring out goofy ways to push the thing to its absolute limits. For instance, the iMac lacks a floppy drive-- so someone out in Germany figured out a way to yank an internal floppy from any prior Mac model and solder it to the iMac's motherboard. Voilà! Instant floppy drive-- and all it costs is the drive itself, a little solder, and the warranty on your iMac. A small price to pay to add slow, low-capacity, but ultimately compatible removable storage to your little blue pet, right?

In fact, a great many of the iMac's "shortcomings," which are probably more accurately referred to as "design considerations," have been addressed by fearless Macfolk screwing with the iMac's innards. No external monitor port? Griffin's got a warranty-voiding Mezzanine card coming out to fix that. USB Sparq drive not yet shipping? Some company apparently has non-USB Sparq drives currently available that attach to the iMac's motherboard without requiring the use of a soldering iron. And so on. Unfortunately, no one's come up with a way to address the single biggest missing iMac feature. Until now, that is.

Before the August ship date, it was long rumored that the iMac's mouse lit up when you used it. Apple originally claimed that this feature never existed, but after someone confronted them with their own QuickTime footage of the phenomenon, they admitted it was something they introduced in early prototypes, but removed soon after. But never fear! Now, through the magic of the web, you can view step-by-step instructions (with color photos, no less) for how to dissect your translucent iMac mouse, solder an LED to its main board, and reassemble it. When you're done, if you did things right, you've got a light-up mouse. If you screwed up, well, MacAlly's selling replacements. Pretty cool, though what we'd really love to see is a third-party USB mouse in iMac colors and textures that lights up all around, not just from a single LED. And it would be even better if the mouse glowed stronger the faster the mouse was moved. With an estimated 800,000 iMacs out there by next year, we bet there'd be a pretty good market for such a cool device...