Sometimes it's easy to imagine that the Mac platform is past its darkest days and it's all sunshine and roses from here on in. What with six consecutive Street-beating Apple profits, phenomenal iMac sales, hardware and software that just keeps getting insanely greater, and Steve Jobs holding hypnotic sway over the majority of the media, it's tough not to relax a bit, kick back, and enjoy a frosty beverage. There's no more red ink, market share's on the rise, very few people are still predicting Apple's imminent and bloody demise (people who used to say that are typically now changing their tune to "Apple will always be a niche player")-- hey, it's Miller time. Then something comes along that taps you on the shoulder, smacks you upside the head with the Reality Stick™, and does the platform equivalent of sleeping with your spouse and kicking your dog. (Incidentally, we are both puzzled and immensely gratified at the surprising lack of country songs about Apple's travails.)

We are speaking, if you haven't already guessed, about the news that Avid has dropped development plans for the Macintosh; one of Apple's so-called "niches" may be forced to migrate to Windows. For the uninitiated, Avid makes all kinds of nifty content creation tools, including the Big Daddy of video editing-- Avid Media Composer. The fact that Avid stuff ran on Macs is one of the big reasons that Macs are as popular as they are in the video editing market. A MacWEEK article spills the details on Avid's NT migration, while a MacInTouch page includes lots of reader response to the news, including speculation about what spurred the decision. There seem to be lots of factors here, including Apple's lack of six-slot machines and Avid's reluctance to port all the drivers for their custom hardware to Mac OS X-- but the dirt being dished is that it really all comes down to a falling out between Avid and Apple, and the fact that both Microsoft and Intel have recently invested in Avid. "Sell-out" is the phrase we're hearing around the virtual water cooler.

If Apple wants to hang onto this "niche" that is such a crucial part of one of its two "key markets," they're going to have to change some minds at Avid, like they convinced Intuit not to drop Quicken for the Mac. Or is this further evidence that Apple is focusing all of its efforts on growing its consumer presence at the expense of its professional market? Last year, Apple's gig at NAB was all about how QuickTime would be such a great standard for professional video production, but this year, it's all about QuickTime 4-- which, with its flashy new look and features like MP3 support, seems very consumer-focused-- and Final Cut Pro-- which, despite its name, is apparently not a Media Composer-league editing application; it's being pushed by Apple as a "prosumer" level video editing system. Who knows exactly why these things happen? Personally, we have an optimistic suspicion that Avid will reverse their decision all on their own once multiprocessor G4's preloaded with Mac OS X start shipping and shining, while Windows 2000 is either still not released or problematic at best...

Odds are, if you're the kind of person who'd like to play a wide variety of Sony PlayStation games on his or her G3 Mac, you bought Connectix's Virtual Game Station at your first opportunity-- whether that meant shelling out your hard-earned cash on the show floor at last January's Macworld Expo where it was unveiled, pre-ordering from Connectix's web site and waiting anxiously for the UPS guy to show up, or simply setting up camp outside your local software store to make sure you got the first copy off the truck. But if, for some reason, you've got a G3-powered system and a hankering to play Oddworld: Abe's Exodus and you don't yet have a copy of VGS, it's time to hurry up and snag one.

See, as you probably recall, Connectix's introduction of VGS last January took pretty much everyone by surprise-- including Sony. Sony was none too pleased to discover that someone was selling a product that emulated their own proprietary game console without paying them one red cent (or even telling them), and sued for trademark dilution and trade secret violation and all kinds of fun stuff like that. However, that lawsuit didn't stop Connectix from shipping its product and even releasing two updates to improve performance, compatibility, and features. Temporarily, though, the party's over; Connectix just issued a press release indicating that shipments of VGS have been halted "in compliance with a San Francisco Federal District Court decision."

That doesn't mean that people who bought the software have to send it back, nor does it mean that stores have to stop selling copies they already have on the shelves; however, it does mean that, for an indeterminate amount of time, no new copies are being shipped to resellers, so once the current stock runs dry, that might be it for a while. In other words, if you want it, get it before it's gone. (By the way, Sony has since filed suit against another PlayStation emulation product, Bleem, so at least they're consistent.)

Bundles are fun, aren't they? It's a great way for all the various resellers to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. Sure, everyone's pretty much selling the iMac for the same price, but at one place you might get a free copy of Tomb Raider, while at another they might throw in an extra 32 MB of RAM. Still a third might let you may an extra $100 for a color printer and cables. Your options are various and sundry, and that's always a good thing-- plus Apple gets the price they want for the iMac, and the reseller draws your attention by throwing in something that's probably cluttering their inventory anyway. Everyone's happy.

Now, it's just generally true that the more expensive the object you're buying, the cooler the bundled stuff is; if you're buying a low-profit item like some RAM, you might get a free copy of a game that came out four years ago shipped in promotional packaging. If you get a PowerBook, you might get a full copy of Virtual PC, valued at $150 or so. It's just the way the profit structure breaks down; generally, you see bundles advertised as "buy this spiffy computer and get a free copy of this nifty software!" That's why we thought is was so cool when Play Incorporated turned the tables by announcing a new promotion for its Electric Image 3D animation software: if you buy Electric Image at its full price of $2,295 before June 15th, you get a free iMac with your purchase.

And this isn't a clearance Bondi Blue iMac, either-- in fact, it's not even a fruit-flavored 266 MHz model. Nope, you get a brand-spankin'-new iMac 333, with plenty of horsepower to handle Electric Image's complex renderings. Now that's a bundle! We'd imagine that Electric Image would prefer to run on a Mac with more than 32 MB of RAM, but hey, you take what you can get. No word on whether or not you get to pick the flavor of your promotional iMac, but we have to assume that you can; they wouldn't mess with the beauty of such a cool promotion by sticking you with an iMac that clashes with the curtains in your den, would they?