So you probably thought that the whole Clone Wars drama was dead and buried, right? And who can blame you? It wasn't exactly the brightest spot in Apple's admittedly mottled history; an ill-defined cloning program simply allowed other companies to siphon away Apple's user base and profits, in exchange for a paltry licensing fee that, at least according to Steve Jobs, couldn't come close to covering Apple's own development costs for that same clone on a per-machine basis. So Steve did what some claim Steve does best: Steve "Steved." With no go-ahead from Apple to ship G3 systems or Mac OS 8, the cloners got squeezed right out of the market. In hindsight, it was a move that probably saved Apple, but for those of you who were paying attention when the whole thing came to a head late in the summer of 1997, you can probably remember the fierce division within the Mac OS community.

So, to a certain extent, the Clone Wars are kind of like the black sheep uncle doing time in Joliet for grand theft auto and fraud-- the whole family knows about it, but there's almost an unspoken agreement never to bring it up in polite conversation. But that's not stopping Umax chairman Frank Huang from dredging up the ugly past. Umax was one of the "Big Three" cloners, along with Power Computing and Motorola, who had to get gone from the Mac OS scene when Steve did the Steve thing. And Huang is vocal about his views on the whole incident; in a CNET article on Umax's upcoming handheld wireless stock-transaction appliances, he's quoted as saying that "Apple did not comply with the contract" and that "because of Steve Jobs [they] were forced to pull out of the market."

Sure, this isn't news to anyone, but it's noteworthy that the death of Mac cloning still makes the news every once in a while, even incidentally. We do feel sorry for the cloners like Huang, who generally got a pretty raw deal, but at the same time we're very glad that Apple's still around. In that spirit, we'd like to award Dr. Huang with the Obvious Statement of the Week award, for saying "it is very hard to deal with Steve Jobs." Sure it is, folks, but that's what makes him a star.

It's like some sort of beautiful dream come true. Long-time faithful viewers know just how long we at AtAT have been hoping-- nay, praying-- that someday Apple would finally ship a light-up Mac. There have been plenty of teasers: rumors that the original iMac lit up when used, reports that prototype blue-and-white G3s relied on internal illumination to backlight the silk-screened "G3" on the inside of the translucent case, sightings of glowing white Apple logos on the covers of pre-production Wall Street PowerBooks, etc. But all of those Macs eventually shipped without the light-up features, leaving Apple's product line sleek, attractive, and colorful-- but unlit. That is, until now.

Over the past several weeks, we received dozens of eye-witness reports that the latest "bronze" PowerBooks, code-named "101," did include a translucent Apple logo that glowed when the unit was in use, due to light filtering through from the LCD display. We've held off on accepting those reports as final proof, though, because we've been hurt before by the differences between early demo models and actual, shipping versions of the same product. So we held our breath and waited. Then Apple pushed back the ship date of the slim new beauties, and we waited some more. Finally, though, customers are reporting receiving their orders, and the verdict is in: the logo does glow. Houston, we have light-up!

For a nice set of first impressions from one lucky PowerBook owner, take a look at O'Grady's PowerPage. All in all, the new unit sounds like a real winner, with "better fit and finish" than the original Wall Street model, a brighter display, the ability to run while closed, and much faster performance. And, of course, an Apple logo that "glows brightly." What a pity that the new system is so much more Mac than AtAT needs for our portable tasks. Here's hoping that the iBook features a glow, too...

"Redmond Justice" continues to prove that it's your best antitrust courtroom drama value for the money. On its first day back on the air, we long-suffering fans were treated to the same level of blunt contradiction in the rebuttal testimony that made the original witness series such a huge ratings success, as one MIT economist flatly rejected another's claims as "confused," "muddled," and "simply wrong." Franklin Fisher's second day on the stand was no less entertaining, as he stood up to cross-examination by Microsoft attorney Michael Lacovara, who tried to counter Fisher's claims of a Microsoft-held monopoly by pointing out possible future competition by handheld organizers like the Palm and next-generation game consoles like the upcoming PlayStation 2000. A Wired article has the juicy details.

Of particular note, though, is the way that Lacovara's assertion apparently directly contradicts Chairman Gates' own publicly written words; when faced with the claim that non-PC information appliances might someday give the PC market a run for its money, Fisher pointed out that none other than Bill Gates himself apparently disagreed. In a Newsweek article penned by Lacovara's ultimate boss in this matter, Gates wrote that "predicting the imminent demise of the personal computer has become an annual ritual" and revealed that "over 100 million PCs will be sold this year"-- almost as many units as color TVs. Whoops! So Lacovara was forced into the uncomfortable position of having to discredit his boss' own words, by implying that Gates' public statements were not "consistent with what people in the industry are saying." Hope you weren't counting on a big Christmas bonus this year, Mike; contradicting the boss in front of the whole world probably isn't high on the "How To Suck Up For Fun And Profit" list.

The whole deliciously embarrassing incident led government attorney David Boies, ever the wit, to quip, "Microsoft's lawyers are now having to disavow not only what the testimony of the industry experts has been, not only what the uniform testimony of the witnesses has been, not only what their internal documents say, but even the contemporaneous statements of their chairman." Zing! Point: Boies. And even ignoring Gates' article, how can you not love a company whose central argument that it holds no monopoly is that someday it might face competition from other products? Yeah, and we're all millionaires because someday we might win the lottery...