Guess what? AppleShare IP 6.2 is out. For the uninitiated, AppleShare IP is a nifty product that serves files to any computer, whether it's a Mac, a PC, or a Unix system. It boasts a slick users-and-groups management interface, excellent performance, and (perhaps best of all) to Windows users, it just looks like another Windows fileserver, which means you can run it in Mac-hostile environments for a few months before casually mentioning to the head of finance that all those spreadsheets he's been storing and retrieving are being served from a Mac. It also includes a mail server, a web server (which is transparently tied in with the filesharing features), and other goodies.

So before Apple's press release went out, the current version of this remarkable software was 6.1; the new 6.2 is optimized for (and actually requires) Mac OS 8.6, and adds a handful of cool new features, like remote web-based Sherlock find-by-content, the ability to maintain users and groups data for multiple ASIP servers via a centralized data file, support for more email protocols, integrated firewall security, and more. With these new features, it's not all that surprising that Apple is charging for the upgrade from 6.1 to 6.2. What might surprise you, though, is the price that Apple's asking for the upgrade: $499. Considering that a 500-user license for the full product is $1499, more than a few users are finding that upgrade price just a little on the steep side. (Join the AppleShare IP mailing list if you'd like to see more, er, "colorful" descriptions of Apple's announced upgrade pricing.)

While we at AtAT are fully cognizant of Apple's need to make an honest buck, this seems to be a dangerous time to be alienating the ASIP user base with what many consider to be excessive upgrade costs. The only price break available is for people who bought ASIP 6.1 after April 19th, who can get the upgrade for $19.95; everyone else, including those who have supported AppleShare from the beginning, have to pony up the full 499 clams. We sense an approaching outcry not unlike the one that arose after Apple changed the QuickTime licensing terms last year. Whether or not that'll make any difference remains to be seen, but for fence-sitters who were considering switching to LinuxPPC, the $499 ASIP upgrade cost might be the proverbial last straw.

See?! See what happens when you go to bed early instead of staying up late channel-surfing? Here we are, anxiously counting down the days until the June 20th premiere of TNT's special made-for-cable original movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley," which tells the story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their respective rises to fortune in a decidedly soap-operatic light-- when faithful viewer Matthew Younce writes in to tell us that he saw it on TNT late last night: "I wasn't sleeping, and was flipping channels about 2:45 when I saw Noah Wyle sitting barefoot with his feet on the table. I thought 'that's gotta be Steve!'"

Now, lest you think Mr. Younce is pulling our collective leg, he's not the only one fortunate enough (or insomniac enough) to have ventured across the surprise screening; while our TV Guide claims that what should have been on TNT was some movie about Mount St. Helens, a Mac Observer article includes eyewitness accounts from others who encountered the sneak preview in the wee hours. This long-awaited historical romp really did air about a month before its official premiere date, and where were we? Sleeping. What a tragic waste of time.

So was the late-night early airing a mistake, or was it deliberate? To Matthew, the unannounced premiere evokes memories of the way Apple aired the famous 1984 commercial once before its Super Bowl showing, late at night in a small town in order to qualify for the Clio awards cut-off date-- TNT could have been doing something similar. We suppose it's also possible that someone just got some tapes mixed up. As for more nefarious explanations, well, we're at a loss to determine just what anyone could gain by bribing TNT underlings to put the show on the air a month early-- but reports of a TNT intern leaving Larry Ellison's stately mansion a couple of weeks ago and making several large bank deposits over the course of the next few days have raised a few eyebrows...

Sometimes the tritest of expressions fits perfectly (there's a reason they're trite, after all), so we have no particular problem with saying, "when it rains, it pours." Just yesterday we pointed out a CNET article which discusses Gateway's "innovative" new all-in-one computer system, which integrates an active-matrix LCD display into the same case as its other Wintel guts. Of course, what the article doesn't mention is that Apple released the breathtaking Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh two years ago, which, in addition to being an all-in-one LCD-based desktop system, also contained plenty of other nifty features that make it significantly more innovative than Gateway's new offering; the primary distinguishing characteristic of the Gateway all-in-one seems to be that it's butt-ugly, but even that's no innovation in the Wintel world.

Anyway, the electromagnetic waves of that broadcast had barely left our solar system when we noticed, with the help of O'Grady's PowerPage, that now Sony is claiming an innovation that Apple cranked out years ago. In particular, they're touting the "MAX Battery" feature of their new VAIO laptops, which allows the systems to use two batteries simultaneously to increase battery life to "up to eight hours" of juice. PowerBook fans will raise a cry of protest when they see the statement that "this dual-battery feature is only brought to you by Sony."

Hmm, what's the word we're looking for... it's right on the tip of our collective tongue, it's a short word, generally denotes an unambiguous negative... oh, that's right, it's "NO." The latest "bronze" PowerBook G3s (when they actually ship) support dual batteries for up to ten hours of off-the-grid use. The just-retired "original" Wall Street PowerBook G3 Series also offered dual-battery support. Heck, if you want to trace the real source of this innovation, you have to dig back through five years of Apple history to 1994's PowerBook 500 Series. Not that Sony's VAIO laptops don't include some excellent features that we wouldn't mind seeing in Apple PowerBooks, mind you, like some truly thin-and-light designs and portables with built-in digital cameras, but for them to claim that their systems are the only ones with dual battery-support is just plain wrong. What's next, Dell claiming that their laptops are the first to ship with trackpads?