It's finally here: the official, honest-to-goodness non-beta release version of QuickTime 4. And while few, if any, people who upgrade from any version of the "preview release" beta will notice much of a difference, it does our heart good to know that Apple finally got the product out the door. After all, if they hadn't released a public beta a couple of months ago, it would have been well over a year between Steve Jobs' first memorable public demonstration of QuickTime Streaming at last year's WWDC and this final release of the software for general consumption. That doesn't exactly set any land speed records in the development world, but we like to think that Apple took the time to get things right.

So those of you who were brave enough to have leapt in feet first and have been running beta versions for the last couple of months, just run the QuickTime Updater application in your QuickTime folder to upgrade to the release version, or wait for QuickTime itself to prompt you for an update. The more cautious among you who avoid beta software as if it were some virulent alien strain of flesh-eating bacterium can now feel (relatively) safe in downloading Apple's latest multimedia software and jumping into the heady world of live streaming QuickTime video.

And speaking of live video, Apple's press release about QuickTime 4 finally going "primetime" confirms the news we discussed a few days ago about a couple of new channels joining the QuickTime family: FOX News and FOX Sports are the latest stream-licious additions to the burgeoning line-up, with a dash of Weather Channel thrown in for good measure. Sure, it's not the blockbuster entertainment value we were all hoping for, but it's something new, at any rate-- and if you watch the Weather Channel for a few hours straight, you can start to ascribe personalities to the storms and fronts and it all turns into a giant melodrama. (Then again, that's probably not normal, is it?) For all the streamed QuickTime you can handle, take a look at Apple's ever-expanding Live Showcase and feast your eyes.

So what is it with Apple and laptops? Over the past few years, it seems that when new products get introduced by the good folks in Cupertino, it's the portables that suffer the longest delays and the bumpiest debuts. Think about it: beige G3s were available immediately after Steve Jobs' big media event introduction in November of 1997. The blue and white G3s, while a little tough to find right at the beginning, were readily available a matter of days after the world first glimpsed their unorthodox multi-handled curves. (At least, we saw several boxes of them at our local Microcenter not long after the unveiling.) Even the iMac, which was widely expected to be extremely constrained when it finally became officially available last August, was pretty easy to find if you were willing to dig a little-- the AtAT staff purchased three on behalf of friends and family on the day they came out. But now look at the portables; last year we had the Great PowerBook Drought of 1998, and now the bronze PowerBook G3s seem to be following suit.

In fact, if you think about it, both the original "Wall Street" PowerBook G3 Series and the new "101" bronze versions were introduced much, much later than the entire Mac community expected-- and once they were introduced they suffered from intense availability problems. Strange, no? This latest debacle has retailers up in arms, since many of them haven't received a single bronze unit yet, despite Apple's announced ship date of May 20th. To make the tension even worse, what few PowerBooks that do exist seem to be going out to Apple Store customers instead of into the retail channel, arguably contrary to Apple's earlier assurances that the Apple Store wouldn't get preferential treatment when it came to shipment of product. An MSNBC article discusses the drought in general, while a PowerBook Zone piece focuses in on the apparent Apple Store policy reversal.

So what is it about PowerBooks that makes them so incredibly tough to release and get into the channel? Availability of the LCD panels? Additional quality control necessary for systems that are going to get lugged all over the planet? Something in the water? Whatever it is, soon we'll find out if the phenomenon only affects PowerBooks, or if it extends to all Apple-branded portables; Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the "P1" consumer laptop at next month's Macworld Expo, so we'll get to watch yet another portable product launch. Here's hoping that availability problems stay away... especially since the AtAT staff really wants one of those things ASAP.

A couple of days ago we voiced our delight at having seen a blue and white G3 Power Mac in the background in a scene from E!'s "True Hollywood Stories" episode about The Brady Bunch. As it turns out, Christopher Knight (aka Peter "Scoop" Brady) is now active in the world of high-tech, and as he was interviewed, the familiar curves of the G3 rested on the desk behind him. According to the show, Mr. Knight works for an unnamed San Jose firm. Thanks to the ever-vigilant AtAT viewing audience, that firm is unnamed no more.

Faithful viewer Shawn King wrote in to note the following: "Chris is a buddy of mine and I'm sure he'd want you to know that he is now the executive vice president of sales and marketing at Eskape Labs." Sure enough, Eskape lists Christopher Knight as a member of the management team; the company makes a nifty video capture device for iMacs called MyCapture™, which lets you digitize video from your TV or VCR right through a USB port. This is a Mac company through and through; as Goddess of Minutiae Katie puts it, "Way to go, Scoop!" (By the way, if Shawn King's name looks strangely familiar to you, it's probably because he's the man behind The Mac Show. Check it out.)

And that's not the only Chris Knight info we got. Prior to joining Eskape Labs, Mr. Knight was the vice president of Graphics Marketing at IMS, now known as IXMICRO, makers of the well-known Road Rocket and the older Twin Turbo graphics cards, among other things. Faithful viewer Nicholas Coult was kind enough to point out an old Mac The Knife page which shows Knight posing with his Knife mug at Macworld Expo in 1997. It doesn't get much cooler than that, right? Mike and Carol would be so proud...