We still can't help but smile when we remember all those naysayers who predicted that the iMac wouldn't influence Wintel PC design at all. Hasn't everyone learned by now that whenever Apple does anything new which is even mildly successful, it's only a matter of time before the copycats start showing up? First there were translucent colored panels and enclosures for standard desktop and tower PCs. Then there were all kinds of wacky computer shapes announced-- Aztec pyramids, flowers, fish, bunnies, etc. And then came the first direct rip-off: the Future Power ePower. This thing was such a blatant copy of the iMac's distinctive design, Apple really had no choice but to sue. (We notice the photos of the ePower on Future Power's site have since been changed to look less obviously like the iMac-- amazing what a little litigation can do.)

Interestingly enough, Apple's lawsuit against Future Power hasn't prevented other PC manufacturers from releasing their own iMac rip-offs-- it's merely made them a little more careful about the way in which they go about it. Apparently eMachines, Inc. felt that Future Power's big mistake was announcing the ePower at a big computer show, months before the machine would be ready to ship. That gave Apple plenty of time to file suit before consumers could get their hands on the iMac wannabes. So eMachines went a different route: they released their eOne iMac rip-off quietly to Circuit City, whose Sunday circular plasters the eOne's image all over the place-- and it's featured prominently on their home page, too. Trying to sneak in under Apple's legal radar; neat trick. And isn't it fitting that Circuit City is the retailer exclusively selling the eOne right now, given the way that Apple dropped them from the national reseller list a couple of years back for doing such a poor job of displaying Macs?

Arguably, the eOne isn't quite as egregiously an iMac copy as the ePower is; it depends which photo of the unit you're looking at. But it's close enough that Apple may be forced to file another suit-- if they don't, we imagine Future Power could use Apple's tacit approval of eMachines' actions as an argument in court. Sounds like Apple's legal team is going to be busy, busy, busy for a long time to come. Bring it on... we could use a little more courtroom drama around here.

By now, just about everybody seems to have settled down and accepted Apple's color choices for the new iBook. You'll recall, of course, that when Steve Jobs first announced that Apple's groundbreaking new consumer portable would only be available in Blueberry and Tangerine, a lot of people were puzzled-- and your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff was no exception. Blueberry we could understand, given that flavor's "most popular" status in the iMac world. But Tangerine was a puzzler; all sales data and all opinion polls showed clearly that, at least as far as iMacs go, Tangerine was the least popular flavor by far. So why would Apple pick the most popular and least popular, and ignore Lime, Strawberry, and Grape? That was the question that got kicked around a lot for a while, with plenty of guesses and conjecture being offered. Was Steve trying to make Tangerine more popular by making it one of the only two iBook flavors? Was Apple just trying to use up the rest of its Tangerine dye before retiring the unfortunate color forever?

Eventually, one explanation was generally accepted by most-- several Apple representatives reported that the company had tried all five flavors, but only Blueberry and Tangerine looked good in the rubber used in the iBook's rugged construction. We wouldn't be surprised if Apple's lab gnomes are working on different dye mixtures right now; iBooks in the other flavors might be introduced not long after the first units ship to store shelves. At least, that was our thinking until Sunday afternoon, when we had an epiphany while watching VH-1's "Before They Were Rock Stars." (Hey, we have most of our epiphanies while watching cheesy cable TV. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.)

See, there's this one Gap ad in such heavy rotation, it's pretty darn likely that you've seen it. It involves lots of vest-wearing models singing Madonna's "Dress You Up" as the camera pans past them, ending with the on-screen phrase, "Everyone In Vests." Personally, we're not at all sure about this whole "vests" thing, but we're not exactly fashion plates, so we'll defer to a higher fashion sense. Or at least a higher-paid fashion sense. But we digress-- the important thing about the commercial isn't the vests at all. Instead, we were struck by the colors used in the ad; there were twenty-four models shown in those thirty seconds, and every single one of them was dressed in Gap clothes that were some combination of grey, black, and-- yes, you guessed it-- orange. Orange is the only actual color shown, since, as Pee-Wee Herman points out, grey and black aren't colors. Just a coincidence? Hardly, my friends. Have you forgotten that Gap CEO Mickey Drexler joined Apple's board of directors not long ago? Just long enough, in fact, for one of two things to happen: either Mickey tipped off Steve that Tangerine was going to coordinate nicely with the Gap's fall colors, or Steve persuaded Mickey to push orange as the hip new color for schoolgoing teens this fall in hopes of making the Tangerine iBook a smash back-to-school hit. Either way, it's a fun little theory, isn't it?

"Apple's made a lot of mistakes over the years." That's our official Understatement of the Week™, which we're getting out of the way right off the bat-- and now that it's been said, we'd like to posit that one of the bigger mistakes may have been trying to spread itself far too thin by going after market segments for which the company wasn't yet ready. If we recall correctly, back in the pre-Mac days, Apple had a pretty good lock on the education market, and a very healthy chunk of the home consumer market, too. Then the Mac debuted, and while it was billed as the computer for "the rest of us," its price tag sent "the rest of us" into sticker shock-- it definitely wasn't priced for home use. Instead, over time the Mac found its way into research situations, higher education, and the desktop publishing industry it helped to create. But Apple always kept lusting after the enterprise market, which was big and getting bigger. Remember those early Power Macintosh ad campaigns? It was the "Business Macintosh." But, of course, not many businesses were buying.

The really sad thing, of course, was seeing Apple trying so desperately to court the big business buyers that it really started to ignore the needs of the people who already were buying Macs. Schools and home users alike looked to cheaper Wintel systems as Apple's consumer models were neither inexpensive nor particularly compelling. (We never met a Performa we really did like-- some of the designs weren't bad, but price-performance ratios were pretty awful for cost-conscious shoppers.) And the lack of Mac games due to Apple's attempt to keep the Mac from looking like a "toy" wasn't helping anybody. Then, of course, once Apple hit rock bottom, Steve Jobs decided to ignore enterprise for the time being and recast the company as a consumer powerhouse, with the iMac and the iBook; meanwhile, the professional-level Macs are, for the most part, nice enough to prevent mass defection of the graphics industry to Windows NT. But plenty of folks still say Apple's never going to be more than a 10%-share niche player unless the company can successfully break into the enterprise market, and so far Steve and Co. aren't playing that game. At least, not publicly.

But here's the interesting thing: this might be the time for Apple to begin courting that difficult market once again. According to an article at TheStreet.com, businesses are already reconsidering the Macintosh as a possible enterprise platform. You need a paid subscription to read the full article, but luckily faithful viewer Mike Dominy was kind enough to give us the gist: apparently a company called Techtel, which tracks computer buying patterns, has discovered that businesses are "evaluating Apple products at a rate quadruple that of last quarter's." Interesting stuff, given the fact that those evaluations had dropped successively for the three previous quarters. So does Steve have anything up his sleeve to kick this unexpected business interest into overdrive? If he does, let's just hope that nothing taints Apple's newfound success with the Average Shmoe...