Faithful viewer John Farr (the Apple news editor over at Applelinks and the author of the Farr Site) brought an issue to our attention which we can only describe as "one thorny pickle." You know those cool-looking new Power Mac G3's that became available on Monday? The "Workstations Formerly Known As Yosemite?" Apparently using one with a modem isn't the easiest prospect in the world. If you go to the Apple Store, you'll find that you can get an internal modem as a Build To Order option-- simple enough; just order your Yosemite with the 56K option and off you go. But according to an Apple TechNote, that internal modem is the same one used in the iMac and the PowerBook G3 Series, which Apple still avows "will not be available as a separate item."

Why is that a problem? Glad you asked. Remember, the Yosemite has no standard serial ports; for serial-style peripherals, it's USB or nothing. So how many of you have a USB modem? There aren't many out there, as far as we can tell-- and worse yet, we've yet to find a single one that has Mac drivers available. That means that the only way to use a modem with a Yosemite right now is to buy one pre-installed. And to make matters worse, it appears that none of the Yosemite configurations selling at retail include the built-in modem, so the only way to get a modem-enabled Yosemite is via Build To Order. Ouch!

Yes, the Yosemites are designed to be professional-level workstations, and with their standard 10/100 Ethernet port they'd fit in fantastically well in a networked environment. But for those of us who work from home and aren't lucky enough to live in an area with cable modem access, there's still a need for a modem in order to connect with the outside world. Someone dropped the ball on this whole mess; given how long they've been working on Yosemite, one would think that Apple would have made sure that Mac-compatible USB modems would be available by now. Oops.

Sometimes you just gotta bust some heads. Windows workstation maker Intergraph has been banned from Macworld Expo for trying to lure the pure of heart to the Dark Side™. Intergraph, you may recall, specializes in making Windows machines that integrate as well as possible into all-Mac graphic design environments-- meaning they've been building a solid business over the past few years by taking advantage of the public uncertainty over Apple's future. (Is it a business principle that vultures rarely starve? Because it probably should be.) For the last two Expos, they didn't even try to get booth space on the show floor, possibly fearing the wrath of dyed-in-the-wool Mac fanatics, but opted instead to push their gear by having company representatives on street corners outside the Expo lure showgoers to a nearby hotel room to sample their wares-- a tactic that had all the subtlety and panache of a drug deal going down.

But this year, Intergraph decided to attend the show itself, and rented out the booth right next to Apple's. They were told prior to the show that they were allowed only to demonstrate how Mac systems could access an Intergraph NT server, which would be in keeping with the Mac theme of the Expo. Instead, Intergraph attempted to show an all-Windows scenario, and IDG Expo Management kicked them out. According to Macworld Expo's president and CEO Colin Crawford, "Apple didn't want it, I didn't want it... they were warned and now they have been banned. It is not our fault." (Does anyone else detect Steve Jobs' influence on this whole situation?) According to Computer Reseller News, Intergraph will be financially compensated for being forced out, which IDG hopes will avoid a lawsuit.

This sort of expulsion isn't exclusive to the Mac side of the convention fence, however. Way back in December of 1997, we recall that Palladium was booted out of COMDEX for daring to parody Emperor Bill Gates and the kingdom of Microsoft. Palladium had hired a Bill Gates impersonator to walk around the show floor and hand out pins and cards promoting their "Microshaft Winblows 98" software-- and the penalty for such a blasphemous action was banishment from the realm. Some people just can't take a joke...

As "Redmond Justice" nears the halfway point of its broadcast run (at least in terms of number of witnesses to testify), the pattern of Microsoft's legal tactics has become abundantly clear: batter the government's witnesses with an unceasing barrage of questions in hopes that they say something self-contradictory or otherwise damaging to their credibility. For the most part, that strategy hasn't been overly entertaining-- it's actually pretty repetitive and dull. But it produces its own lively brand of entertainment by annoying the holy heck out of Judge Jackson, who has had to warn the Microsoft legal team several times about their "needlessly belligerent or cynically repetitive questions," as Charles Cooper calls them in his ZDNN commentary.

Now that the government's last witness is on the stand, we're anxious to see how Microsoft handles its own witnesses instead-- and how the government lawyers plan to face down the twelve people testifying in Microsoft's defense. We're hoping that the government's antics are at least as entertaining as Microsoft's turn out to be, because now that excerpts from the Bill Gates Video Deposition Party are no longer being shown, we're getting a little starved for thrills and laughs.

In fact, we can't even change channels to the other big Microsoft lawsuit for much fun anymore. According to a Bloomberg News article, Microsoft and Sun have been ordered to seek a "mediated settlement" in the fight over Java. That means there's a distinct possibility that we won't get to see an epic court battle over Java's heart and soul. Then again, given that Java has already figured quite prominently in "Redmond Justice," we'd probably just think we were watching a rerun anyway...