C'mon, you knew it'd be a star from the first moment you saw it: the Expo crowd held its breath in anticipation as Steve yanked the covers off Apple's new consumer portable known as the iBook. Sure, it was "Rubenesque," its color sense was "daring," and the handbag-style handle was, er, unique. But despite the inevitable whining about heaviness and "girliness" and so forth, everyone knew deep down inside that the iBook had that special essence known as star quality. And while sales got off to a late start due to availability problems, now PC Data has confirmed what we all could have guessed from the beginning: the iBook is the hottest laptop on the market.

According to an Apple press release, PC Data found that the iBook was the number one selling laptop computer at U.S. retail outlets for the fourth quarter of last year. That's the quarter which includes the frenzied consumer spending spree known as "the holiday season," in case you've forgotten-- which means Good Things™ for Apple's continued consumer success. In fact, if you combine the numbers for iBooks and PowerBooks, Apple reportedly scored a solid 10% share in the U.S. retail laptop market; not bad at all. Imagine what the numbers might show when Apple finally ships Pismo, especially if a Graphite iBook is really in the cards as well.

So congrats to the iBook for making its mark on the computing landscape. We're sure it wasn't easy to claw its way to fame and fortune when debuting in the shadow of big brother iMac, but everyone's favorite girly laptop succeeded admirably. However, fame is fleeting, and the public is fickle; here's hoping the iBook has some new tricks up its sleeve to keep things interesting in the months ahead. It'd be a shame for the iBook to turn out to be a one-hit wonder.

Tsk, tsk-- you'd think Microsoft would have learned something from all those "creatively enhanced" test results they wheeled in for the "Redmond Justice" trial. Remember the faked videotapes showing how Windows 98 supposedly runs slower when Internet Explorer is removed, and the hilarity that ensued when government mouthpiece David Boies spotted the proof that the before and after results involved two different computers? Remember later in the same trial when Microsoft delivered test results showing Internet access speed comparisons between two operating systems and neglected to mention that one computer had a much faster modem? Check it out-- some folks just never learn.

The latest bit of skullduggery to issue forth from Redmond comes to us courtesy of faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil, in the form of an article in The Register. It seems that Microsoft got a bit overzealous in its marketing efforts for the forthcoming Windows 2000. Evidently the company feels that the much-delayed successor to Windows NT 4.0 needs a bit of a hard sell to pump up the sales numbers, especially after such a long wait. That's why they're claiming that, according to a ZD Labs speed comparison, Win2K "outperforms" NT 4.0 by "up to 24 percent" and is therefore "significantly faster." There's just one problem: the ZD Labs report apparently doesn't say that at all.

In fact, what ZD Labs found was that on systems with 64 MB of RAM (the vast majority of workstations would have at least that much, we imagine), Windows NT 4.0 was actually faster than Win2K. And the speed gap actually widened when the same tests were conducted on systems with 128 MB of RAM: "Windows 2000 was three per cent slower than Windows NT 4.0." Sadly, ZD Labs didn't test higher-RAM systems, which are very likely to be used in real-world scenarios, but if you'd care to extrapolate from those two data points, it sounds like NT 4.0's performance advantage grows as more RAM is added. And why bother with a 32 MB test at all, when Microsoft recommends a minimum of 64 MB for Win2K, unless it's just to provide at least one scenario in which Win2K is actually faster, albeit marginally so? Then there's the little issue of NT 4.0 being deliberately crippled in the tests by using a slower file transfer mode. The part that kills us, though, is that even with every advantage stacked towards Win2K, the test results were so lackluster that Microsoft still had to spin them for the marketing hype.

Here's a question for you: what do you suppose was so wrong with Apple's latest Audio Update that it got pulled mere days after it was posted? Audio Update 1.2 was for USB-equipped Macs running Mac OS 9, and according to Insanely Great Mac, it was posted last Thursday to "improve USB audio support" and "provide support for the Harman Kardon iSub speaker." However, now the download page lists the update as being 0 KB in size, and indicates that it "has been removed; any attempt to download this file will result in an error message."

Now, call us crazy, but we're always a little suspicious when a software update gets pulled and the only reason given is this: "Apple has discovered an issue with this software that necessitated removing it from our servers. We expect to have a new version available for our customers soon." They discovered "an issue"? Exactly what is this "issue" and how bad might it be? We notice, for example, that Apple doesn't recommend that eager beavers who installed the update while it was available take any measures to uninstall the software. There may also be people who downloaded the update without yet installing it, yet Apple doesn't even recommend to them not to run the installer. Nor do they recommend that all affected users immediately delete the installer, reformat their hard drives and zero all data, and then disinfect their Mac's speakers with undiluted bleach. So we can't help but wonder just what, indeed, is up with that.

The most likely scenario is that this "issue" has something to do with "potential startup crashes" mentioned recently on MacFixit, and also hooks into the veritable plethora of "issues" people have discovered with the newly-released QuickTime 4.1. The least likely scenario involves a highly contagious übervirus capable not just of trashing one's data, but also of infecting users with a strain of flu bioengineered from alien tissue. Personally, we think startup crashes are dullsville, so we're leaning towards the latter. So remember, wash your hands every time you use a Mac with Audio Update 1.2, and keep your fingers away from your face.

Update: Faithful viewer Alan Benson was the first to note that Apple has now posted a revised page, stating that the "issue" with Audio Update 1.2 is that the Audio Extension 1.0.1 that it installs "can cause a crash when the computer is put to sleep or shut down if there is an active PPP connection." Yeah, that's just what they want you to think. In any case, they recommend deleting the Audio Extension 1.0.1 if you've got it installed.