Not that we've conducted a formal scientific survey or anything, but it sure seems like there's an inordinately high percentage of Star Wars fanatics within the Mac-using community. Suppose that might have anything to do with the, shall we say, "familiar" theme of a hopelessly-outnumbered band of rebels struggling against overwhelming odds to defeat the Evil Empire? At any rate, your AtAT staff loves Star Wars, just as we love to play games. That's why the latest news about LucasArts is so exciting.

See, if you've been paying any attention at all to the Mac games market for the last few years, you know that things got pretty grim. Indeed, with Apple's financial troubles and the Mac's Incredible Shrinking Market Share™, fewer and fewer games developers were willing to bet that a Mac version of their software stood any chance of making any money. So developers left in droves, and one of the biggest bummers to us was seeing LucasArts, purveyors of such fine Star Wars-themed games as "Jedi Knight" and "X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter" put their Mac development efforts indefinitely "on hold" until the market grew to a financially feasible size. But last Friday, the Mac Gamer's Ledge reported that LucasArts was finally won over by the consumer success of the iMac, and they plan to release a new game for the Mac later this year.

Then today the news got better still, as MacCentral reported that LucasArts' long-awaited return to the Mac platform wouldn't even involve the porting of an existing popular PC title; instead, rumor has it that LucasArts is working on a whole new game based on the Star Wars: Episode One movie coming out this May. When that game (still unannounced for any platform) shows up sometime later this year, it'll be available for the Mac, as well as for the Dark Side. So warm up your lightsabers and get ready to rock.

There have been a lot of changes at Apple over the last couple of years, to be sure, but one of the most significant is that they finally seem to be listening. They listen to what customers, developers, and resellers have to say, and they even seem to be heeding some of that advice. Think about some of the relatively recent strategic moves Apple has made, based on feedback from the tech community. Just a couple of weeks ago, Apple announced that it had licensed the OpenGL 3D APIs from SGI, in response to games developers who said that it was important. Bigger still was the way that Apple scrapped its original Rhapsody operating system plans, which required all developers to rewrite their applications from scratch in order to work at their fullest potential; instead, Apple came up with Mac OS X and Carbon, which requires only a "tune-up" on the part of third-party developers.

There have been product changes due to customer feedback, too; remember how the iMac was originally going to ship with a 33.6 kbps modem? And how the revision A iMacs had only a Rage II graphics chip and 2MB of video RAM? Well, it looks like Apple's listening again-- to the people saying that the Mac's audio system is really starting to sound substandard. Take, for example, the iMac and its two front-mounted stereo speakers; they're not bad, but they could sound a lot better. While the speakers themselves are certainly at least partially to blame, even when connecting external speakers, the sound that comes out of most Macs isn't as full as it could be. But take heart! Apple hears your pain, and has taken steps to boost the audio power of its Macs with some new technology from Spatializer Audio Laboratories.

Yes, according to an Apple press release, starting later this year Apple will include several of Spatializer's sound-enhancement systems in all of its computers, which will provide better sound all around. The new technology essentially improves 3D stereo positioning and beefs up the bass, even with only two conventional speakers. We're adopting a "wait and see" attitude before we get too excited about the whole thing, but we like the idea of listening to CD's through a PowerBook's built-in speakers and not hearing it sound like one of those crystal radios we built when we were kids.

While it's not strictly relevant from a Mac perspective, we've just got to point out the fantastic story of a Linux user who tried to return the copy of Windows that came with his Toshiba laptop. See, Microsoft's got these deals set up with many computer manufacturers, Toshiba included, that requires all computers to include a copy of Windows pre-loaded on the system; we've discussed in the past how it's extraordinarily difficult to buy a PC without a Microsoft operating system these days. But the gentleman in question had no use for Windows, and so he set out to return the bundled software for a refund. The odyssey he went through makes an interesting point about how tight a grip Microsoft has on the personal computer industry.

The basis for the software return was sound; the Windows license agreement states clearly that if the end-user doesn't agree to the terms and conditions of use, he or she should "promptly contact PC Manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund." After lots of letters and email back and forth, Toshiba finally grudgingly cut a reimbursement check-- but only after it became clear that their only other option was to take the whole system back for a full refund, which would have cost them significantly more money. And one gets the distinct impression from the story that Toshiba ate the cost of the software return themselves; Microsoft didn't lose a penny.

Now, many of you have brought up an important point when this subject has arisen in the past: you can't buy an Apple computer without the Mac OS, either. But think about the difference: Apple makes the Macintosh, a synergy of hardware and software. They make the physical machine and the operating system, which combine to form what we know to be Macs. (This became all too clear to us when we bought our PowerTower Pro-- it runs the Mac OS, but it's definitely not a Mac.) It makes perfect sense to us that Apple should be able to decide how they sell what they make. Microsoft, on the other hand, makes the Windows operating system, and "persuades" the hardware manufacturers to sell a copy on every computer they ship. The end result might be similar-- after all, if you buy a Mac just to run LinuxPPC, you're not very likely to get reimbursed from Apple for the Mac OS, especially since part of the Mac OS is still in the hardware-- but the distinction is an important one: Apple controls the way that it sells its own products, while Microsoft controls the way that dozens of PC manufacturers sell their products. It's a wacky world, to be sure...