Another Super Bowl has come and gone, having bestowed its annual mixed blessings upon your friendly AtAT staff. Pro: the laundromat was nice and empty. Con: drunken louts driving like maniacs trying to complete beer runs while missing as little of the game as possible made road travel especially treacherous. Pro: losing the annual office pool reminds us that we're correct not to play the lottery. Con: no X-Files, and the Simpsons didn't come on until almost 11PM. The big Pro, though, of course, was that this year marked Apple's return to advertising during the big game; the 60-second HAL 9000 commercial aired during the first break after kick-off, pointing out to millions of viewers that the Macintosh is particularly well-insulated against the upcoming year 2000 bug.

We didn't actually get to see the commercial on TV, as yours truly was busy dealing with aforementioned drunken road louts while trying to maneuver the AtATmobile to the nearest Trader Joe's, and if you missed it, too, you may be interested to know that Apple has reposted the QuickTime version-- and there's even a nifty new closed-captioned version for those among you who dig subtitles. But be careful to whom you show it-- you don't want to touch off a widespread panic, or anything. Faithful viewer Dan Downey points out a Seattle Times article, which quotes Institute for the Future director Paul Saffo as saying that Apple's Y2K-themed ad is "irresponsible" because it feeds the fear that Y2K means the End of the World As We Know It™.

Now, don't get us wrong-- we certainly don't condone any unnecessary alarmist rhetoric about Y2K or any other impending potential "issue." We just think it's a little overly-sensitive to think that such an obviously tongue-in-cheek commercial could have long-term negative consequences. After all, it's not like this was Jeff Goldblum urging the populace to pull their funds out of the banks and stock up on canned goods and firearms, here-- it was a computer, and a fictional one at that. And if Mr. Saffo thinks that your average football-loving tube jockey shouldn't worry about Y2K, well, we have to disagree. It's a serious problem, and it will very likely affect everybody (yes, even those of us with Macs) in significant ways. For examples of how many people are trying to ignore the problem, check out the Duh-2000 site, which tabulates the stupidest Y2K quotes and bestows monthly prizes. Our favorite, while not exactly political in nature, is the winner for Stupidest Vendor Compliance Statement: "The current release is year 2000 compliant, and the next release will be even more year 2000 compliant." HAL would be proud.

"Today, the states... Tomorrow, the world!" While we don't actually have any proof that Apple's plans for the iMac include a virus-like attempt at complete world domination, the sales figures would seem to speak for themselves. We've all heard time and time again that the iMac was the number one selling computer in the United States over the holiday sales quarter, but it appears that the demand for cute, round computers has infected markets from other lands as well. Like some kind of alien microorganism, the iMac appears to be multiplying and taking over several countries at once. For instance, consider what a MacCentral reader has to say about the iMac's influence in Japan...

Japan's always been a Mac-friendly market, but the popularity of the iMac among Japanese computer buyers is, shall we say, "disproportionately high." (More accurately, though, we could also say that the iMac is kicking serious patootie in the Land of the Rising Sun.) Apparently since its introduction at the end of last August, the iMac's slice of the Japanese retail market share pie has never fallen below 10%, making it the most popular personal computer for twenty-one straight weeks. More impressively, though, iMac sales have been rising, not falling; when the rev. B's hit the streets and Apple unveiled the "Smart Loan" program (the Japanese equivalent of Apple's "Three Pizzas" consumer loan), the iMac's share jumped up to about 20% in early December. And when Apple Japan cut the price of the iMac by 50,000¥ a couple of weeks ago, that share rose even higher-- first to 25%, and then to nearly 29% for the week of January 11th through the 18th. Not only does that percentage put the iMac squarely in the number one sales slot, but it also absolutely buries the runner-up-- a NEC laptop which captured less than 6% of the market. Zowie...

And Japan's not the only other country where the iMac is going great guns. Take France, for instance-- it's not exactly a country terribly well-known for being a Mac haven (though we've never heard it described as particularly Mac-hostile, either). According to a MacWEEK article, it sounds like the iMac is echoing its U.S. success over in the French computer market: research firm GfK reports that the iMac was the best-selling computer in France in the September-to-November quarter. In addition, major French computer retailers are reporting record sales for everyone's favorite candy-coated consumer machine. Now that the iMac has spread its popularity across countries representing three separate continents, can global domination be far off?

ADSL-starved Mac users can rejoice-- Bell Atlantic has finally seen the light. Regular viewers will recall Mac user Steve Godun's Herculean effort to purchase a high-speed ADSL Internet connection for his Mac clone. It seems that Bell Atlantic chose to support only Pentium-based PC's and iMacs for this service, excluding all other Macs for no good reason... or, at least, no good reason that they could elucidate. A full account of Steve's Kafkaesque journey through the labyrinthine bureaucracies of Bell Atlantic customer support is still available at the MacInTouch site-- but this time, there's a happy ending.

Following an absurd saga of frustrating runaround from other Bell Atlantic personnel (which is related in excruciating detail over three hefty web pages), Steve finally received email from someone who actually seemed to understand what was going on. Apparently, Bell Atlantic was simply unaware that retrieving the hardware Ethernet address from a Macintosh is a trivial affair with the use of the right software-- for instance, the Apple System Profiler installed in the Apple Menu on Mac OS 8.5 systems. Bell Atlantic supported iMacs (and not other Macs) because the iMac has the Ethernet address noted on a sticker on the side. However, they are working on their own software to determine the Ethernet address on any Macintosh running System 7.5.3 or higher, and they "expect that solution to be ready in mid-February." Not bad. Although, simply adopting a policy to accept any customer who can readily provide his or her Mac's Ethernet address seems like a logical solution which Bell Atlantic has simply overlooked. Whatever.

The upshot is, Bell Atlantic customers who want to get ADSL for their non-iMac Macs won't have to wait much longer. While that may seem like a minor victory to some, it's always a step in the right direction when another company realizes that Macs aren't second-class citizens. Kudos to Steve for finally winning in the end.