Okay, the gloves are off! The pressure's been building for years, now; early on, it seemed that perhaps Steve Jobs and Mike Dell might turn out to be friends, since it was Steve's NeXT crew that built the Dell online store which eventually made Mike so filthy rich. But once Steve returned to Apple and took NeXT with him, things turned frosty; Mike made some rude comments about Apple to the press, and even sold out to Microsoft who rebuilt the Dell site from scratch, eliminating all traces of the now-Apple-owned technology. Steve's response was to launch his own WebObjects-powered Apple Store and nudge Dell out of first place in terms of inventory management. Then Dell started copying Apple's products, announcing "cool" consumer desktops, consumer laptops in two colors, and even wireless networking options. And the Apple-Dell rivalry has just been kicked up another notch, thanks to Dell's recent press release claiming to have stolen the top spot in Education sales from Steve and the gang.

The only problem with Dell's claim, however, is that it's total horse puckey-- at least, according to Apple. Steve's retaliating with his own press release which cites numbers from International Data Group and Quality Education Data reaffirming Apple's continued reign as King of Education. Steve's take on the matter is that "Dell didn't incorporate Apple's direct sales into their Education market share calculations. If they had done so, they would have been reminded that Apple remains the Education market share leader." Whoops! Funny how Dell-- a company whose only revenue comes from direct sales-- could "forget" to count Apple's direct sales when tallying up the numbers. Which is why when we say "forget," we really mean "Dell is a pack of dirty thieving liars." (Faithful viewer David Schwartz put it slightly more colorfully, but this is the kind of show where we still say "horse puckey," so we'll skip the tussle with the ratings board and just leave it at that.)

So, based on the numbers that Apple dug up, as of the second quarter of this year, Mac sales still account for 22.2% of the overall Education market, giving Apple the gold medal. But even more embarrassing for Dell is the fact that Compaq took the silver with 19.1%, and Gateway won the bronze with 17.2%-- leaving Dell as an "also-ran" with fourth place and 15.8% of the market. How will Dell respond to Apple's press release, which essentially amounts to "liar, liar, pants on fire"? Could this be the start of a knock-down, drag-out press release cage match? Will Dell's next move be to issue a statement calling Steve a "big poop-head"? Stay tuned!

Apparently we missed something, here-- when did Microsoft buy RealNetworks? It must have been during that week we spent with our eyes glued to the "Before They Were Rock Stars" marathon or something, because we have no recollection of this happening whatsoever. But acquisitions are a common item on Bill Gates' to-do list (heck, sometimes he buys three companies before breakfast) and we figure that the RealNetworks purchase just slipped right past us. How else could anyone explain the news that RealNetworks has been secretly tracking private customer data?

Yes, as faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil notes via a Reuters article in MacWEEK, if you use RealJukebok, then RealNetworks knows what you're listening to. In fact, they know how many songs you downloaded and kept on your hard disk, what file formats those songs are in, whether you prefer Country and Western to Death Metal, and even what kind of portable MP3 player you've got, if you're lucky enough to own one. And they're tracking all that data by attaching it to a GUID-- a globally unique identifier. If that term sounds familiar, it may be because a GUID was secretly embedded in every document created with latter-day versions of Microsoft Office. It's old hat from the folks in Redmond.

Oh, wait-- our mistake. Apparently RealNetworks is not owned by Microsoft. (Yet.) In a followup New York Times article, RealNetworks admits that the secret collection of music data from customers is a violation of the company's own posted privacy policy. They've posted a patch that will make RealJukebox stop submitting private data, and they've even launched an "immediate review of RealNetworks' privacy practices" complete with "outside privacy experts to verify that [the company's] practices are consistent with its policies." That doesn't sound like a Microsoft-owned company to us; the standard Redmond response would likely have been stony silence to be interpreted as a big, fat "so what?" Anyway, it's all just one more reason to use QuickTime instead. Unless Steve's watching, too...

Speaking of acquisitions, it sounds like Apple may be getting out the checkbook soon. According to a CNET article, Steve and company are "in the final stages" of buying "all or part" of a company called Raycer Graphics. Raycer is working on new 3D chipsets originally targeted at the high-end workstation market, with the eventual goal of bringing the technology to personal computers as well. Sure, it's not as exciting as an attempt to buy Palm, but hey, it's what we've got.

Nobody's entirely sure just what Apple wants from Raycer; sure, every Mac ships with a 3D accelerator as standard equipment, ranging from the ATI Rage LT Pro in the PowerBook to the Rage Mobility in the iBook to the Rage 128 in the Power Mac G4 and the new iMac. But ATI is an established company with a decent track record (we'll overlook the debacle with the Rage Orion delays and the Rage 128 drivers being buggier than an anthill), while Raycer has yet to ship a single product. So we fail to see just what Apple wants to do with Raycer's work; some people suggest that Apple's looking to integrate 3D capabilities into chips that perform other tasks, in order to save money, while others speculate that Steve's just looking to bring the Raycer personnel and patents into Apple. Who knows?

And, to a certain extent, who cares? Remember that $12.5 million investment Apple made in Akamai? Well, after Akamai's recent IPO, that $12.5 million turned into $500 million overnight. So Apple's got plenty of cash to throw around, and $20 million for a 3D chip company isn't going to break the bank. We figure everybody's entitled to go shopping every once in a while. Normal folks like you and us, we impulse-buy some Tic-Tacs and a copy of the Weekly World News. Maybe Steve impulse-buys 3D graphics companies instead. Hey, he's mercurial-- get used to it.