Whaddaya know? It looks like Apple's sense of timing may just be impeccable after all. We were starting to get really nervous about the relative scarcity of Power Macs in the channel, since several resellers are reporting that they have virtually no product left to sell, or will be out of stock by early next month; heck, even the Apple Store is out of Power Macs, except for 266 MHz desktop models. Since most reports pegged the sleek new "Yosemite" G3 Pro Macs for a Macworld Expo introduction but a late January ship date, it looked as though the first month of 1999 could be a lean one for Apple sales.

But check it out: Mac OS Rumors sheds some doubt on the "late January" ship date, claiming that Yosemite has entered the full-scale production phase and that Apple's plants are hard at work churning out the smoky translucent towers. Apparently that means that resellers might start seeing Yosemites show up on their loading docks as soon as ten days from now, though they won't be allowed to sell them until after the official unveiling on January 5th. (Keep in mind that some resellers sold iMacs before the August 15th launch date, so if you've got to be the first one on your block with a Yosemite, you might want to start looking for bribe-worthy Apple dealers.) This all fits together with the notice posted at the Apple Store that a bunch of new Power Macs would become available for order in early January, which we considered to be wishful thinking, at best.

Sure, there's still plenty of time for a fatal mistake or a tiny glitch to send the whole thing tumbling down, but the point is that Apple seems to have a tight plan in place. Since that's far more organized than we ever get, we're mighty impressed with the whole scenario. And by the way, regardless of what happens with the Yosemite G3's, those of you who are planning on buying a PowerBook or an iMac instead are all set-- apparently there are plenty of those available for purchase. Quite a difference from a few months ago, isn't it? Back then, iMacs were tough to spot on store shelves, and the backlog of PowerBook orders was simply scandalous. It's that kind of variety that keeps us so mightily entertained. (Yes, we're easily amused.)

We've said it before and we'll say it again: you just can't beat a Steve Jobs article for some rollicking good fun. For instance, take the San Francisco Examiner's latest feature article on the man, which focuses both on his role in Apple's rebirth and his involvement with Pixar, the digital movie company responsible for both Toy Story and A Bug's Life. While the Apple-related info isn't anything particularly revealing, it's still a charge to hear Steve talk about how all those other computer companies "aren't even computer companies-- they're part of the distribution channel," because all they do is integrate parts from other suppliers rather than concentrate on making a better computer from the ground up. The really interesting stuff, though, is hearing Steve's take on the way that Antz beat A Bug's Life into theaters.

Steve says that he's "disappointed" that Dreamworks, the company headed by ex-Disney honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg, would "purposefully set out to make a film along the same lines" as Pixar's pet project. There was no coincidence involved in the two films' similarities; according to director John Lasseter, "what Dreamworks did has completely changed the community of animation," which used to be a friendly and open community, but now must treat its ideas as heavy-duty trade secrets, for fear of rivals beating them to the punch. Sure sounds like the computer industry to us. Says Lasseter, "I feel like Pixar was the development department for Dreamworks."

Hmmm, Dreamworks cast as a rival digital movie house who stole Pixar's idea and beat them to market with a shoddier implementation... Anyone else seeing any parallels, here? How about if we mention that old conspiracy theory about how Bill Gates owns a chunk of Dreamworks, and deliberately rushed Antz out the door in order to add a heaping helping of worry to Steve's already-overfilled plate, while Steve was working so hard to get Apple back in shape? Or perhaps you haven't noticed the eery resemblance between the main character in Antz and a certain filthy-rich software peddler residing in the Redmond area? It's déjà vu all over again. Coincidence? Ha! Just watch-- in fifteen years, the government will be showing videotaped testimony of Katzenberg in the Dreamworks antitrust trials.

Meanwhile, in "Redmond Justice," the trial has come around to retreading some very old ground-- namely, the question of whether Internet Explorer is an application, or an integrated component of the Windows operating system. The government's next witness is Dr. Edward Felton, a computer scientist from Princeton, who testifies that, yes, he had considerably more trouble uninstalling the latest version of IE from Windows than he encountered when uninstalling earlier versions. However, "with the help of two young assistants" (does anyone else immediately think of a magic act and two Vegas-style women covered in sequins?) he was able to remove IE4 from Windows 98. Read all about it in the Industry Standard.

Felton's method of removal is decidedly sketchy: basically, it doesn't sound like it really removes IE4's code, but rather eliminates any access to the program for the end user. Felton strips out the desktop icon that launches IE and any executables that call the program, and also makes changes to the Windows Registry so that HTML files and the like won't automatically be opened in IE. (Sounds pretty much like telling Internet Config or the Internet control panel to use, say, Navigator instead of IE-- only much hairier.) Microsoft, predictably, points out that Felton's method hasn't really removed anything, only crippled it-- and even if he were able to remove IE4, it would prove nothing. "You can surgically remove someone's right arm, but the arm was certainly a useful part of the person's body before it was removed," they argue.

By the same token, though, just because a telephone is a useful object, surgically attaching one to someone's head doesn't necessarily make it a necessary and unremoveable integrated communications system. It was certainly a useful device before it was attached. Some of you might feel otherwise, but we're perfectly happy being able to use whatever phone we want, whether it's a cellular flip-phone or a dancing Elvis phone-- and if a better phone comes out tomorrow, we're happy that we we can go out and buy it without having a phone we don't want to use still surgically attached to our heads. I can definitely say this: I've been using Windows 98 with the "integrated" IE4 for three days, now, and I see absolutely no benefits that it offers over having whatever browser application I want to use installed on my Mac and set up in the Internet control panel. There's little doubt that IE is "integrated" far more than any other application, but as far as we're concerned, it's quite clearly a case of forced integration for market share's sake, and not for any customer benefit.