So your New Year's resolution was to stick to your budget and not to break down and spend thousands of dollars on newly-released Apple equipment that you really don't need just yet. Then the Yosemites were unveiled, pictures of the new "El Capitan" casings were widely circulated around the 'net, and you found yourself glancing with more and more distaste towards your old beige Mac. But you held firm! You stuck to the rational arguments against getting a new computer right now, and your credit cards narrowly escaped the sucking bog of another couple of thousands of dollars worth of debt. And then you walked into your local computer store and saw one of the Yosemites for the first time in person, and, well, those "rational arguments" are starting to sound pretty weak. (For those of you who haven't seen one up close yet, trust us-- Yosemite looks a lot cooler in person.)

But don't despair! If you really, really shouldn't be blowing a couple of grand on a new computer just yet, Mac OS Rumors is here to help. Only a week after Yosemite's unveiling, they have come forth with new details on Sawtooth, the next next-generation professional Mac. If you think the 400 MHz G3 in the high-end Yosemite is fast, consider that Sawtooth with use G3's ranging from 450 MHz to 600 MHz-- and G4's from 500 MHz to 850 MHz. Plus, the G4's will be juiced up with AltiVec, that wacky set of processor enhancements that promises to speed up many procedures by several hundred percent. In addition to the three PCI slots, two FireWire ports, and two USB ports of Yosemite, Sawtooth will also have on-board Gigabit Ethernet, an AGP slot for potentially even faster Rage 128 graphics, and a standard DVD-ROM drive. And perhaps most importantly of all, Sawtooth's enclosure is rumored to be much closer to the "original" El Capitan design, with darker blue plastics and a more angular look.

How's that for a list of reasons to hold off on buying a new Mac? Of course, if you need a new professional system now, by all means, get a Yosemite. But if you, like us, are working just fine with what you've got and the dangerous impulse to buy a Yosemite is simply a matter of intense technolust, then dreaming about a Sawtooth might be just the ticket to continued short-term financial solvency. And when Sawtooth ships probably late this year, we'll be just about ready to upgrade-- unless rumored specs for the next big thing keep us salivating.

Okay, so what really happened with Windows workstation vendor Intergraph at last week's Macworld Expo? As late as this past Sunday afternoon, a Computer Reseller News article claimed that Intergraph had been expelled from the Expo for violating certain guidelines set down by the Expo gods-- namely, that Intergraph would only be allowed to show their NT servers being accessed by Mac clients. When Intergraph instead showed off their all-NT solutions, Expo bigwigs gave them the boot-- or so the story went.

But on Monday a MacWEEK article claimed that the whole story was nothing but a rumor. They quote Mac Publishing LLC CEO Colin Crawford as saying that "Intergraph... was a welcomed exhibitor and participated in the Macworld Expo." He goes on to say that "Intergraph... and myself have always worked well together... We look forward to working together in the future." Fair enough. Except that the CRN article about Intergraph's expulsion also quoted Colin Crawford. And in that article, he says that "it was unethical of [Intergraph]... They were warned and now they have been banned."

So what's the deal, here? There are any number of standard soap opera plot devices that could explain Crawford's mysterious flip-flop: long-lost evil twin, multiple personality disorder, amnesia (always a favorite!), zombie attacks, abduction by aliens and replacement on earth by an alien-hybrid clone, etc. Take your pick. Personally, though the abduction scenario holds a particular soft spot in our collective AtAT heart, we're betting that Lawyer Intervention had a lot to do with it. Betcha that the Crawford quotes in the CRN article were never meant to be made public, and Crawford's subsequent "we love Intergraph" litany was made to help ward off a lawsuit. Or then there's always the possibility that Crawford was killed in a car accident and replaced with a surgically-altered double to avoid alarming his fans-- we'll have to look for clues on Crawford's next few albums.

Finally, it's Microsoft's turn to bat in the ongoing courtroom drama known to us all as "Redmond Justice." The government finished up with its twelve witnesses today when the last of them, MIT economist Franklin Fisher, testified in a closed-door session that Microsoft set Windows pricing in ways intended to crush competitors and reward computer manufacturers that agreed to help Microsoft maintain its alleged stranglehold on the market. Strangely enough, first up in Microsoft's batting order is another MIT economist, Richard Schmalensee.

Schmalensee's written testimony certainly leads off with a legal bang: according to an Interactive Week article, he claims that the government has "failed utterly" to show that Microsoft holds a monopoly. What follows is almost a point-by-point rebuttal of all of the government's claims; Schmalensee not only disagrees with the government's conclusions, but also calls into question the data used to arrive at those conclusions, such as market share numbers for the web browser market. Schmalensee's motto seems to be, "Everything you know is wrong."

Points off to Microsoft for leading off with an economist; it's not the most entertaining choice in the world, is it? (Although we have to admit, the name "Schmalensee" makes us smile. Schmalensee. Schmalensee. Say it! It's fun.) We'll reserve judgement until we get to see how Schmalensee handles himself under cross-examination, though-- he sounds like he might be a real pistol. There's potential for some heated moments, there. We're very anxious to see where the show takes us now that it's Microsoft's witnesses taking the stand.