Uh-oh, what's this? Just when we thought we'd actually have a reason to watch the Super Bowl this year (we lean more towards the basketball end of the sports spectrum), suddenly it all comes tumbling down around our ears. Faithful viewers will recall that Super Bowl XXIII, scheduled for a week from Sunday, was to include Apple's first commercial during that event since its "Lemmings" spot aired way back in 1985. (In 1984, of course, Apple aired its teaser for the Macintosh, directed by Ridley Scott and held by some to be one of the greatest commercials ever made.) But according to Advertising Age, Apple is pulling out at the last minute.

There isn't much information available on why Apple's decided to bail, but Fox is definitely looking for another advertiser to purchase Apple's slot. (AtAT would buy it up, but we're just a little short on cash these days.) So why the sudden change of heart? Is a particular product not yet ready? If that's the case, then might the planned commercial have featured QuickTime 4.0, which was expected at the recent Expo but now might not surface until next month? That seems like a pretty narrow focus for Apple's first Super Bowl commercial in fourteen years, so we doubt it. But something big was planned, and something happened-- or didn't happen-- to sour the deal.

Poor, poor us; Apple watchers who felt ripped off when Apple didn't advertise on last year's event thought we were finally going to see a firm declaration that the Mac is back. Sure, profits, sales, and market share are on the rise, and great new products like the iMac and the new G3's tell the story-- but a Super Bowl ad would have crystallized those points and made it known all across the world. Guess it's time to start waiting for next year. Perhaps a Mac OS X unveiling?

Fans who have been tuning in to AtAT for any length of time know that the AtAT staff are big fans of The X-Files, and, like most longtime fans of the show, we were blown away by last Sunday's episode, which finally marked a return to the dark conspiracy theories of previous seasons instead of the "X-Files Lite" flavor that has characterized most of the season so far. But your AtAT staff was stoked for another reason, too, and that is the juicy rumor posted over on O'Grady's PowerPage that the episode may have included a sneak peek at some forthcoming Apple technology.

For those of you who may have taped the show and haven't seen it yet, we don't want to give too much away (especially since we've been guilty of that in the past, and we've been called on it), but a character on the show uses a pen-interface backlit handheld PDA-like device to control the behavior of a nanotechnological "virus" that's in someone's bloodstream. The PDA is also used for text-to-speech purposes when the character places some anonymous phone calls. Well, according to O'Grady's PowerPage, that PDA may in fact be Apple's MacMate, the Newton-replacing handheld that Apple's been promising ever since the Newton was killed. We consider it a long shot-- a really long shot-- but we suppose it's not altogether out of the realm of possibility.

And if the device shown on "The X-Files" was the MacMate, then it's pretty cool indeed. We didn't get a terribly good look at it, but a flip-up antenna was clearly visible; in the show, that antenna was used to control the nanovirus, but in real life, the MacMate has been rumored to include wireless Internet access capabilities. (Although, if the MacMate does ship with the capability to allow the remote-control murder of one's enemies, then Apple may have a real winner on its hands. Talk about a killer app...)

So far, it hasn't been a very good year for Microsoft. The beleaguered software giant continues to fight legal battles on all sides, and public opinion (at least the media's public opinion) seems to be waning fast. In the midst of that whole mess, the next version of its Windows NT operating system has seen so many delays, you'd think it was code-named "Copland." And according to ZDNet's Jesse Berst, Microsoft has hinted that yet another delay will push the release of the renamed Windows 2000 into the year-- you guessed it-- 2000.

Another NT delay is a sticky situation, because according to Microsoft's own web site, the current NT 4.0 isn't fully Y2K-compliant; in fact, at some point we seem to recall Microsoft stating that the solution to NT 4.0's Y2K bugs was simply to upgrade to Windows 2000, but now that Windows 2000 may not ship in time, a strategy shift may be necessary. The remaining incompatibilities in NT 4.0 seem relatively minor, and Microsoft claims they'll all get fixed, but we wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that businesses who leapt on the NT bandwagon are more than a little peeved. And that's why some of them have had enough and are looking for alternatives.

Now, Jesse of course sees this latest NT slip to be a big opening for Linux, the open-source UNIX variant that's been gaining popularity in recent years. Heck, even Compaq is preparing to start shipping servers pre-loaded with Linux soon. However, if Apple does a good job pushing Mac OS X Server loaded on Yosemite-based server machines, this could also be a big break for Apple to jam its foot in the enterprise door-- especially if, as rumored, they play up the whole Y2K-readiness thing in an advertising blitz next month. But several sources state that Apple is downplaying the importance of Mac OS X Server, which we find disappointing, because it really has a chance to make some noise. Presumably we'll all know how Apple chooses to play this game when the operating system finally ships next month.