Many of you know that the AtAT staff produces this little show from our lovely studios located in the Boston area. Boston's a great city that boasts lots of neat stuff, like baked beans and a professional baseball team whose typical frustration output is second only to the Chicago Cubs. (No flames, please; as a born Cubs fan, I'm allowed to say that.) One of the other things we have, though, is often not so pleasant to have around; his name is Hiawatha Bray, and he writes for the Boston Globe. Mr. Bray is one of those tech columnists who really seems to hold something personal against our beloved Apple, because whenever he mentions anything that came from Cupertino, the best he can manage is a backhanded compliment and the worst is a flat-out panning. We like to think of him as sort of a localized John Dvorak, only with more manners and, seemingly, more technical knowledge-- and some kind of intense burning grudge against Apple that he keeps bubbling just below the surface.

At least, that's the Hiawatha we know and love. Imagine our surprise, then, when we read his latest column and found him brimming with praise for an Apple technology: FireWire. There's plenty to like about FireWire, and Bray pretty much hits them all-- 400 Mbps, hot-swapping, plug-and-play, support for 63 devices per bus, those cool red-and-yellow VST hard drives that fit in your pocket and plug into a FireWire port to mount instantly on the desktop, etc. He goes on to say that Apple's (apparent) decision to include FireWire on all Macs over time is "their smartest move yet," and even points out that in order to try out this cool new technology from Apple, he "had to leave [his] Pentium II PC behind" and use a colleague's G3 instead.

It gets better. He even works in a little praise for the new G4s, calling it a "cool gadget" whose "hilarious" new commercial is "not just hype." (He actually contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce to confirm the G4's export status.) In fact, if it weren't for the single little dig at the Apple of the past, who had to put FireWire's development on the back burner while the company had "other things to worry about-- like meeting its payroll," we'd strongly suspect Mr. Bray had been bribed, or RDF'd, or killed and replaced with a more Apple-friendly double. Instead, it looks like he just calls them as he sees them, and sees FireWire as a huge winner.

Remember the iMac introduction last year? It wasn't long after the consumer unit was first shipped that the happy little Bondi Blue space egg started appearing on TV shows. The first occurrence we can recall (apart from Apple's own commercials) was in an ABC promo spot for the upcoming premieres of Spin City and The Drew Carey Show; the iMac that would grace Mimi Bobeck's desk all season was briefly but clearly visible in the commercial. Since then, iMacs have turned up all over the tube, beautifying the television computing landscape across the dial.

So now, scads of faithful viewers have been writing in to mention the television debut of the next phase in Apple's plan to rule the consumer computing market: the iBook. Kevin Burk was the first to note that the other night, on Fox's new show Get Real, a Tangerine iBook was onscreen for several seconds and upstaged the actors and stole the scene. Sadly, we missed the show, which looks to us to be a Foxified and updated version of My So-Called Life-- and if it's half as good as that short-lived and long-lamented teen angst-a-thon, we should definitely be tuning in. Plus, it's showcasing iBooks, so even if the show's lame, at least we'll get to ogle some fine looking equipment. Congratulations to the iBook for its small-screen debut, and we hope it secures lots of juicy roles in the year to come.

On a related note, is anyone as nervous as we are about the incipient fall TV season? Basically, there's just too much we want to watch, and far too much of it shares time slots. In particular, pitting That 70's Show against Buffy is dirty pool in our book; that's the programming equivalent of the irresistible force versus the immovable object. Thank heaven for VCRs, but one of these days we just know we're going to run up against a three-way scheduling nightmare that will force us to buy another recorder.

Remember how we recently said that Airport stood a solid chance of being the Apple technology that could bring lots of new blood to the Mac platform? Well, apparently Dell agrees that wireless is the way to go. You may have seen by now that Dell, Newman to Apple's Jerry, is rushing to offer a wireless networking option on its laptops, which has prompted analyst Lindy Lesperance to name Dell as the "first leading PC manufacturer to offer wireless networking with business notebooks," according to a CNET article. (Remember, the iBook isn't a "business" laptop.)

Technically, Lindy's correct, we suppose, even though Dell's wireless option is about as lame as Apple's is ingenious. Whereas the iBook has the required antennae built right into its plastic casing and requires only the addition of a completely internal $99 user-installable card to activate the technology, Dell is apparently just bundling an "AiroNet" PC card with their same old laptops. If it's like other cards offered by third parties, those things jut out of the laptop's slots, because the antennae have to be included somehow. (Don't get us wrong; it's just a little thing sticking out, not like a pair of rabbit ears or anything-- but it's nowhere near as cool as the iBook's method.) In addition, Dell's add-on card costs $400. That's four times as much as Apple's AirPort card, even though you get twice the range.

Still, the iBook isn't a business machine, and the current Powerbook G3 is no more AirPort-ready than Dell's laptops are. The only way to AirPort a Powerbook is to add a third-party card, just like Dell is doing; for instance, the $299 Farallon SkyLINE card is fully AirPort-compatible and has been available for a few weeks, now. So if Apple had just made them an add-on option for Powerbook purchases at the Apple Store, Dell wouldn't have been "first." And for elegant AirPort networking in the Powerbook, we might have to wait for next May and the next big Powerbook revamp.