Blimey! It looks like Apple's declared war on the British or something. First there's the ongoing saga of Apple's extreme reluctance to show up at any Mac trade show held in the UK-- the company bailed out of the English Apple Expo last year, cancelled this year's show, and just recently pulled out of next year's show, originally slated to be the biggest UK expo ever, complete with one of Steve Jobs' famous keynotes. And if that wasn't enough to get UK Mac users and vendors to lose their cool, Apple's added insult to injury by also revealing that the Mac OS will no longer be available in a British-localized version. Instead, British Mac users will have to opt for the "International English" version. Say so long to the Rubbish Bin...

Yes, according to a Macworld UK article, Apple has eliminated the British version of the Mac OS from its development list, citing lower costs and quicker release times as reasons for the decision. So starting with Mac OS 9, UK Mac mavens will have to put up with all sorts of Americanizations from which Apple had once shielded them. In addition to seeing their "Rubbish" converted into "Trash," they'll also have to put up with spelling departures from the Mother Tongue: "color" instead of "colour," "favorites" instead of "favourites", etc. Sure, these may sound like pretty small issues to a lot of us, but wouldn't you find it a little jarring if Apple suddenly used British spellings in the U.S. release of Mac OS 9? (Personally, we think that'd be kinda cool, but that's just us.)

And really, we doubt that the anger felt by lots of British Macfolk is just due to a few spelling incongruities. More likely it's that sinking feeling that Apple no longer feels Great Britain is worthy of its attention; after all, it's not like Apple never made a British-localized Mac OS-- this is something they used to do, but now have decided is no longer worthwhile. You know, sort of like showing up for UK Mac trade shows. As Macworld UK notes in a collection of reader reactions, even Microsoft makes a British version of Windows. So does Steve Jobs have some sort of psychotic hatred for the English, à la Otto West in A Fish Called Wanda? Perhaps there was some childhood tragedy involving a steak and kidney pie of which we've never been made aware?

Admit it: when it comes to sheer bang for your antitrust entertainment buck, no other case delivers as consistently as "Redmond Justice." It makes us laugh, it makes us cry, and occasionally it makes us hurl. Well, okay, mostly it just makes us laugh. Whether it's an incredulous giggle at a bizarre bit of testimony or a hearty guffaw at yet another Microsoft slip-up, we're grateful for the joy it brings into our lives and we'll be sorry to see it wind to a close.

See, if you were expecting the show to drag on for another few years due to the glacial progress of our legal system, you might want to make other plans. Sure, in most cases testimony alone could have gone on ad infinitum, but Judge Jackson was clever enough to set hard limits on the number of witnesses each side could call, and he's kept the pace of the trial far more brisk than it could have been. That makes the case more exciting, but it also makes it shorter. And if you were counting on the lengthy appeals process to keep you entertained for the next decade or so, that may not come to pass either. A Sm@rt Reseller article notes that a "rarely used section of the federal antitrust statute may allow the DOJ to circumvent most of the standard process," kicking the appeal into high gear and possibly bringing forth a final judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court as early as late next year. And that'll be the end of it.

On the other hand, we probably don't have to worry about the case ending too soon, either. Our biggest concern has been that Microsoft will finally waver in its stubbornness and agree to a settlement, which would end the show with a sudden and disappointing anticlimax. So we're grateful to faithful viewer Al Barten, who pointed out a Wired article about the Justice Department's antitrust chief Joel Klein. Apparently Mr. Klein is not a fan of accepting settlements when a ruling would set an important precedent. While he didn't mention "Redmond Justice" specifically, it's pretty clear that Klein's going for a real, honest-to-goodness verdict in the case, in hopes of setting a precedent that might be useful against Microsoft (and other potential Microsofts) in the future. So fear not-- it sounds like we can look forward to at least another year of "Redmond Justice" and its special blend of drama and belly-laughs.

Generally, we at AtAT consider ourselves healthily paranoid. After all, there's nothing wrong with maintaining a reasonable skepticism and examining possible ulterior motives when big, scary corporations are involved. So when Microsoft and NBC teamed up, we don't think it was out of line for us to expect some, shall we say, "less than objective" coverage of any Microsoft-involved stories from the unholy offspring known as MSNBC. Still, there are some folks who go all Scully on us when we voice that opinion, but for those people, we can only point to MSNBC's recent poll and smirk knowingly.

Check it out-- The Register has a nice, detailed article on the debacle that was MSNBC's online poll seeking opinions about the Microsoft-vs.-government tussle we've all come to know and love as "Redmond Justice." It seems that MSNBC asked its readers whether they agreed with Judge Jackson's findings of fact; did Microsoft have monopoly power, did they use that power illegally in a manner that harmed consumers, and what should happen to the company? Now, here's the bit that should make you go "hmmmmm": while Internet Explorer users could happily click away and register an opinion, anyone using a Netscape browser found that the poll's buttons didn't render correctly, so there was no way to vote.

So was it just an innocent instance of a severely incompetent webmaster who doesn't test in multiple browsers, or was it a deliberate attempt to skew the poll's results in favor of Microsoft? Once the problem was reported to MSNBC, the bug was corrected, allowing all readers to vote, regardless of browser choice. Except, of course, for Mac users, who found themselves unable to contribute to the poll using Netscape or IE. Now, we were almost willing to let that first problem slide, but our skeptical minds have a hard time accepting that a professional web developer would not only forget to test a web app in Netscape, but also completely forget to test on non-Windows platforms as well. After all, what better way to garner more Microsoft-friendly votes than to disable the poll for everybody except those using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC? Oh, those wacky Redmond guys...