Sigh... Another year, another snub from the meanies at Time Magazine. Poor Steve Jobs; here's a man who pulled off one of the greatest turnarounds in history in a classic story straight out of Hollywood (boy cofounds company, boy is ousted from company, boy returns to save company by building translucent computers), and he can't seem to catch a break in the "Person of the Year" awards. While he really should have been awarded the title last year for introducing the iMac, we figured he'd at least get it a year late, since 1999 hasn't exactly been a small year for him, either-- at Apple, he trotted out the G4s, the iBooks, and the new and improved iMacs, while his other company Pixar kicked box-office butt with the release of Toy Story 2. And yet he got passed over for that Jeff Bezos guy over at Amazon.com.

Yup, Bezos is 1999's Person of the Year. Nothing against Jeff or Amazon-- we like the site, we use it, we've found great deals, and our Christmas shopping was greatly simplified. But Steve's starting to look like the Susan Lucci of the Time award, so we can't help but feel a bit sorry for him. At least he made the cut of ten "People Who Mattered," wedged in between Jiang Zemin and Maddy Albright. (Strange bedfellows indeed...) And it's nice to see that they've updated the classic photo of Steve snuggling an iMac-- now it's an iMac DV Special Edition. Awwww...

Still, if Lucci could finally snag an Emmy, we figure there's always next year for Steve. Hopefully he'll start campaigning right away. Perhaps you can do your part to help the cause; right on the main POY page, Time's asking whether or not people agree with their choice. When last we checked, more people agreed than disagreed-- but not a lot. Perhaps we can shift that a bit and give Steve a little head start on next year's race...

It's official: we're declaring AirPort to be Apple's "Most Maligned Product of 1999." For a while there it looked like the iBook was a solid lock, what with all the comparisons to toilet seats, make-up compacts, and Hello Kitty fashion accessories; it's amazing what a little masculine insecurity can kick up. But now most of the furor over the iBook's unconventional looks has given way to the numbers, which show it to be one of the best-selling portables on the market. Sure, you still see reviews that claim the iBook is slow, you still hear complaints about the admittedly paltry 32 MB of RAM in the shipping configuration-- but for the most part, people acknowledge that the iBook is a success.

Not so with AirPort, we're afraid. Occasionally you might stumble across a glowing review (heck, we're thrilled to pieces over our AirPort setup, which has been trouble-free from the get-go), but we're sensing a lot of anti-AirPort angst from reviewers and users whose experiences haven't been nearly as happy as ours. Remember, even the mighty Ted Landau of MacFixit fame was pulling his hair out over Base Station problems, so it's not exactly a surprise that mere mortals like the reviewer for the Washington Post had enough difficulty to declare Apple's wireless technology "stuck in the frustrating foreground." And the latest piece of anti-AirPort bile comes from Walter Mossberg,the Wall Street Journal's tech columnist. According to the Mac Observer, Walt showed up on CNBC to rave about the new iMacs-- and call the prospects of getting an AirPort Base Station working "impossible for anybody without some technical knowledge and help."

Ouch. Apparently Walt spent over four hours getting wirelessed before he was surfing sans cables. Not a good thing. Apple claims that they're aware of the difficulties many people are experiencing, and hope to make set-up a lot easier with a new iteration of the AirPort software due next month. In the meantime, we consider it a darn shame that such terrific technology is being saddled with a reputation for being difficult. AirPort was the iBook's killer app when it was unveiled way back in July, but between delays in getting the products out the door and now the issues with set-up, wireless may not catch on as quickly as it should. On the other hand, we've got ours. What else matters?

So we were kicking back on the couch Sunday night, watching Fox with one eye and surfing on the iBook with the other. Our Christmas cards were all sent, most of our shopping was done, and, after a heinous all-night frenzy of giftwrap and packing tape (don't try this at home, kiddies-- we're trained professionals), almost all of the presents for out-of-state friends and family was firmly in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service. Sure, there was more to do-- but it was time for a break.

And how gratifying that break was. First, as faithful viewer Phil Duffy notes, the special Y2K Hysteria episode of King of the Hill showed Hank buying Peggy a Y2K-compliant replacement for her ancient and beloved Kaypro computer-- and it was clearly shown to be an iMac. "I got you the Blueberry one," says Hank. Score one for Apple in the raging battle for cartoon market share. (Also, an ex-Dell employee was portrayed as mean, spiteful, and paranoid-- an added bonus. And maybe it's just us, but the brusque salesperson who was incapacitated when the store's computer system crashed had Best Buy written all over him.)

But that's not all; as faithful viewer Scott Hadley reminds us, Microsoft took its lumps on the holiday episode of The Simpsons. For those of you who missed it, the season's hottest toy turns out to be a doll programmed to destroy all other toys-- how's that for anticompetitive behavior? "Just like Microsoft," quoth Bart. Out of the mouths of brats, and all that. Ah, Fox-- what outrageously good deed must we have performed in a past life to deserve you?