We know it's kind of old news, now, but we think it's worth mentioning the lawsuit that Exponential filed against Apple Computer. The Ex-PowerPC contender used to be pretty friendly with Apple. Intimate, even, in a sugar-daddy sort of way; as Exponential's biggest shareholder, Apple kept them bankrolled while they slaved away on the Next Big Thing in PowerPC-compatible chips, the BiCMOS-based x704, which Apple wanted to feature in high-end Wintel-killing systems.

What happened? Way-ell, turns out that the x704 wasn't turning out all that hot. Correction-- it was TOO hot, yielding more heat than your typical light bulb to squeeze out performance that, despite the chip's 433MHz clock speed, was pretty lukewarm when compared with the 750 (then G3) chips coming out of Motorola/IBM. So last May, suddenly the marriage was over-- Apple walked, saying that the Mach 5's and G3's were more their style.

Panicked, Exponential then turned to the clonemakers (remember those guys?), trying to find a market for their product. Imagine their surprise when they found that the cloners couldn't use the chip without a revised Apple ROM on the motherboard. D'oh!! Exponential alleges that Apple never made this clear. We've seen it all before-- Secrets will kill any relationship. With no market for their product, Exponential closed its doors.

So Apple made a $1.5 million initial investment in a product that never saw the light of day, and now they face a $500 million lawsuit from their "Ex" for causing their failure. Sound like an old episode of Dallas?

Speaking of lawsuits, Apple's filed one of its own-- against a former employee. So reports the San Jose Mercury, who tells us that Gary Edwards, former head of Apple Imaging, is accused of accepting more than $1 million in bribes from printer component supplier James E. Grimes Co., in return for throwing said supplier $168 million in business.

However, the Grimes Co. claims that the lawsuit has nothing to do with kickbacks, but that it's just Apple's next move in an ongoing "business dispute" between the two companies. Grimes says Apple "improperly seized $3 million worth of inventory" from one of Grimes' Sacramento warehouses.

Sounds like both companies are overtired and ready for a "time-out." What's next? We're guessing either sugar in the gas tank, or a burning sack of doggie doo on the front porch.

Hey, the new Bob LeVitus site is up and running. We've long been a fan of Bob's columns and books, because he manages to be informative while still being really, really fun to read. Go check it out, if for no other reason than to support another cool Mac-made site.

We'd publicly like to state our sincere hope that the "Help Folder" column from MacUser survives the MacWorld/MacUser merger. We'd be sad to see it go.

Oh yeah, Bob was Head Evangelist at Power Computing, and we thought it was really cool when they released the special "Kill Bob LeVitus" version of the Marathon 2 demo (which replaced the normal M2 Bobs with clones of Bob LeVitus in Power Computing t-shirts). I, for one, spent a lot of time painting the virtual walls with Bob's virtual guts. ;-)

Faithful viewer Larry Auerbach asks, "Is it true that Steve Jobs used to play Barnabas Collins on "Dark Shadows"?

I'm not sure, Larry. Gimme a sec here to confirm this via the AtAT staff...

Yes, Larry, we have independent confirmation that Steve Jobs indeed used to play Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows. As if you needed it, above is the photographic proof, courtesy of TechWeb and The World of Dark Shadows. Strangely, Steve seems to have gotten younger since the 1966 vampire show aired. Could it be... a deal with the devil? And was that the warmup to the deal with Bill Gates? Only his agent knows for sure.