Apple's buyout of Power Computing is on hold due to a federal antitrust review, according to the Austin American-Statesman. But instead of being a surprising federal attack on Apple for anticompetitive practices, Power's corporate counsel John Teets says "[the review] appears to pertain to [the Department of Justice's] ongoing investigation of Microsoft."

U.S. attorneys have asked for thousands of "voluminous and detailed" documents from Power, but many of them have little or nothing to do with Apple's proposed purchase of Power's Mac OS business. So what could they be fishing for? Well, recall that the DoJ's current snit with Microsoft involves their alleged violation of a 1995 court order by using their near-monopoly on the desktop OS market as leverage to force Internet Explorer onto their users. Now recall the agreement between Apple and Microsoft in early August; one term was that Apple would make MSIE the default web browser for the Mac OS. Presumably the DoJ is trying to prove that Microsoft intends to monopolize the web browser market, and they think that documents from Apple's Power buyout may support that.

Meanwhile, this development has heaped yet more woe upon Power, whose uphill battle into the Wintel world hasn't even really started yet. Until the review is over and the deal is closed, Power lacks the resources to tackle the Wintel notebook market head-on. Due to sparse advertising and low inventory, they had sold only 150 of its PowerTrips as of their layoffs a couple of weeks ago. Can they survive? And if they can, will they thrive?

Stop them presses... Webintosh is reporting that the new front-runner in the Apple CEO race is Ed McCracken, the former CEO of SGI. Ed announced his resignation from SGI about a week ago, following "disastrous" financial results due to SGI's difficulty in penetrating the UNIX server market, according to a Techweb story. (Nice to see that Apple's not the only company Techweb describes as "beleaguered.")

SGI still has a bio of McCracken on their site. Salient points:

• He joined SGI in 1984 and since then has raised their yearly revenues by nearly 700-fold!
• Before that, he spent a 16-year executive stint at Hewlett Packard.
• In 1995 he was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology from President Clinton.
• His photo makes him look like an odd cross between Tommy Lee Jones and Ed Begley, Jr.

A few sites, including Mac OS Rumors, are reporting that the MessagePad 2100 will not be the last in the MessagePad line, as has been widely rumored, following several layoffs in the Newton department. Now Rumors is saying that we can expect a new MessagePad in "early to mid 1998." (We'd expect closer to mid than early, since the 2100 has only just begun shipping.) It would appear likely that the next MessagePad will include some of the goodies originally expected in the 2100, like an SA-1100 chip, and possibly a color screen.

While the eMate's future seems secure, having been blessed as "way cool" by Steve Jobs, the MessagePad's future is still uncertain. As Rumors suggests, its fate will probably be decided in the months following Apple's November 10th Big Thing, whatever it turns out to be. But it seems we are likely to receive at least one more MessagePad in the future.