Ahhh, Blue Blocker-- the scandal that keeps on giving. We refer to Apple's widely-publicized, never-officially-denied insidious campaign to make upgrading current and future Macs as tough as possible. The furor began when word leaked out that Apple's last firmware update for the blue and white G3 actually rendered the system incapable of booting if a G4 processor was installed; prior to the update, the same system could use a G4 happily. So was the lockout intentional? That depends on whom you ask, but if you go by sheer volume of the cries of outrage, the overwhelming teeth-gnashing majority of the Mac world would seem to think that it was. And if it was intentional, did Apple simply mean to curtail G4 chip shortages in the short term until they could get some Power Mac G4s out the door, or was it just one skirmish in an all-out war on upgrades? Rumors that upcoming G4 systems moved the proprietary Mac hardware ROM to the processor card (à la the iMac), thus making the systems effectively impossible to upgrade without Apple's say-so, followed hard upon.

Anyway, enjoy the righteous indignation while it lasts, because if Mac OS Rumors is right, then Blue Blocker may soon just be last week's scandal. They're reporting that "reliable Apple sources" confirm that the next firmware update for the blue and white G3s will remove the G4-blocking code, thus returning the systems to an upgradeable state. However, these same sources indicate that, yes, Apple developed the block on purpose, in an attempt to keep the G4 announcement a surprise. Remember Apple's G3 unveiling? The G3 chip was fairly old news by then, since several companies had demonstrated screaming-fast upgrades at Macworld Expo several months before-- in systems that were benchmarking faster than Apple's first G3 Power Macs. That stole a lot of thunder. By comparison, the G4 introduction had more thunder than anyone knew what to do with; buzz on the G4 continues unabated.

So blue G3s, more likely than not, will end up being upgradeable some time in the relatively near future. As for rumors that "Sawtooth"-based Power Mac G4s would have the Mac ROM on the processor card, those appear to be false as well. Mac OS Rumors now claims that the confusion arose due to "outdated diagrams" of the motherboard. Again, we're not going to know for sure until Apple actually ships the new systems in (hopefully) a few weeks, but for now at least, it looks like upgrading has a future on the Mac. Beyond the next few months, though, who knows?

Have you noticed that Apple's kept us all so busy since the last Macworld Expo that we've heard nary a word about the Apple-Palm rumors? Think about it; one of the "expected surprises" during Steve Jobs' New York keynote was some sort of Apple-branded Palm device to fill the handheld gap left by the deep-sixed Newton. Instead, that keynote focused heavily on the iBook introduction-- which had so much "wow factor" that just about anyone who had been hoping for a Palm announcement promptly forgot all about it. And the iBook buzz had barely died down to a dull roar when Seybold rolled around, and Steve gave us the Power Mac G4. Cool Stuff Overload! No wonder we haven't been thinking about the MacPalm too much lately...

...But we're probably going to start again now that people are talking about Handspring, Inc.'s new Visor. Handspring is the Palm licensee started up by the original founders of Palm, who split to work on Cool New Things™. The Visor, according to a MacWEEK article, will be Handspring's first product, to be released next Tuesday. Think of it as a Handspring-branded Palm device that's "cheaper, faster, and more expandable." First, cheaper: prices for the three models will range from $149 to $249. That's good. Faster? While the Visor will use the same processor as the Palm V, an "optimized hardware design" will make it zippier to use. And as for "more expandable," the Visor will accept plug-and-play "Handspring modules" like pagers, MP3 players, cell phone units, etc.

Sounds good to us-- and as faithful viewer Russell Maggio notes, it's nice that the Visor will ship with Mac connectivity right in the box. So that's all gotten us thinking about Apple's Palm device again. If Handspring can add so many improvements to the Palm, what could Apple do? Here's hoping that the company whose very name and brand are synonymous with "innovation" doesn't just slap a colorful translucent logo on a Palm V and leave it at that.

Longtime AtAT fans know we're not ones to shrink from a conspiracy theory, no matter how far-fetched. In fact, the wilder the theory, the brighter our eyes light up and the wider our grins get; there's a certain glee and sense of relief from personal responsibility that arises from simply acknowledging that everyone else is out to get you. Tired all the time? No wonder-- the government's pumping you full of satellite-relayed gamma rays while you sleep. Can't seem to hold down a job? Well, duh-- you've been on a Freemason blacklist ever since that highway incident four years ago when you cut off that guy with the funny-looking medals on his car. See how it works? We'd get together with a pop psychologist and try to pitch a twelve-step book on the subject (Paranoia For A Happier You), but the shrinks are all in on it, too. Trust no one.

So even though this latest Microsoft-NSA theory has been debunked pretty thoroughly, that won't stop us from filing it away in our massive dossier labeled "Microsoft World Enslavement Campaigns." (Incidentally, the file is kept entirely in our heads; paper trails are how they get you in the end.) If your surfing is pretty much limited to the Mac-oriented sites, you may not have encountered the uproar that exploded last week when some guy discovered a mysterious secondary cryptographic key that exists in all copies of Windows. There were a couple of things that made the key suspicious: first, Microsoft never told anyone about it, and second, it was called "_NSAkey." The NSA, for the uninitiated, is the National Security Agency, a U.S. government agency that often figures heavily in conspiracy theories penned by those who are bored with blaming the CIA for everything. Interestingly enough, the NSA is the country's cryptologic organization-- they make and break codes. So along comes this hidden second crypto key in Windows called "_NSAkey," and of course it's not tough to postulate that Microsoft has sold out all Windows users to the NSA and now the government has secret back-door access to every Windows system on the planet. If you want to get up to speed, The Industry Standard has a nice summary article and links to lots of other resources.

Now, of course Microsoft immediately refuted the rumors, which probably only made them spread even faster-- what's a conspiracy theory without a public denial? Microsoft admits the presence of the second key, but calls it a "backup key" to be used in case anything happens to the first one. As for why it's called "_NSAkey," they claim that it's an "unfortunate name" that was chosen because the key lets Microsoft "ensure compliance with the NSA's technical review," but the keys are held by Microsoft and are not shared with anyone, "including the NSA." Believe what you will. For lots of people, there are two seemingly-omnipresent organizations with enormous power: Microsoft, and the U.S. government. So isn't it natural that a conspiracy theory uniting the two-- in secret collusion to compromise the privacy of millions of computer users, no less-- would appeal to the paranoia center in the average brain? So for the Windows users out there who just discovered file corruption that flushed days of work down the toilet, relax. Don't beat yourself up. It was the government's fault-- and Microsoft helped.