Remember the Scary Times a few years back? Apple was losing a billion dollars a year, and the company was shedding people and projects at an alarming rate in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding. Copland was proclaimed a money pit and axed, OpenDoc was laid to rest, and entire departments working on Cool Stuff™ were cast off and left to fend for themselves in the wilds of Silicon Valley. We feel cold just thinking about it. Of course, things are much better now; Apple's still on the upswing, awesome products are streaming out of Cupertino with no signs of stopping, Steve Jobs has a new jet to play with, and all's right with the world.

Or, at least, all's right with Cupertino. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Apple's a global company, and its operations don't cease at the U.S. borders. And the vibe we've been getting from Apple Europe, for example, seems strangely reminiscent of the Scary Times here in the States. The U.K. Apple Expo was canceled (again), the entire U.K. marketing staff was laid off last month, the German marketing staff was pared down significantly, and most recently we heard that all U.K. support staff are being laid off or relocated to Cork, Ireland. Despite reports of Apple Europe's explosive sales growth, we can't help but be reminded of the bloodshed and carnage that ravaged Cupertino a few short years ago.

So when we read in Macworld UK that Diego Piacentini, Apple Europe's general manager and veep of sales, is resigning, we can't help but wonder just how far the shakeup will take things. Okay, Diego has supposedly left Apple "for his own, personal reasons," but in the light of all the layoffs and disruptions in his neck of the woods recently, we find ourselves wondering if his personal reason is simply that "things at Apple Europe suck right now." It's purely speculation, of course, but layoffs and resignations often go hand in hand. Luckily, Diego has agreed to stick around through the end of the quarter while Apple looks for a replacement. Here's hoping that once the dust settles, Apple Europe will enjoy a Golden Age like the one in Cupertino.

Man, it seems like everyone's talking about Aqua. Mac OS X's "refined" Mac interface may be lickable, sure, but it's also controversial as all get-out. We ourselves were embroiled in the debate over the new "Finder," and even that one isolated topic generated a torrent of email from opinionated X-watchers. With all the discussion about Aqua's new button layout, minimizing behavior, giant icons, lack of true Desktop behavior, etc., talking about Aqua is a full-time job. And you couldn't pay us enough to get dragged into the unending debates about the Dock-- even combat pay wouldn't be worth the risk to life, limb, and sanity.

That said, if you'd like to read as much as possible about Aqua's perceived pros and cons without necessarily getting involved in the arguments yourself, there are plenty of resources to visit. If you haven't seen it yet, Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini (Apple's former human interface guru) has a point-by-point critique that is essential reading. David K. Every has an excellent three-part interface dissection at MacWEEK. Faithful viewer Helen Balasny notes that the Aqua debate is entering the semi-mainstream with a new Salon article. (Will Aqua be Apple's "New Coke?" Uh-oh, they've already renamed the Blue Box "Classic"!) And faithful viewer Chris Tipton-King provides a more youthful perspective; we wish we had had that kind of focus when we were sixteen. Heck, we don't even have that kind of focus now.

That's a lot of Aqua-talk, and yet it's positively dwarfed by the fiesty debates raging over email lists and Usenet. Of course, being the suspicious little fiends we are, we can't help but wonder if Steve's keynote demo was specifically engineered to generate all this free publicity through arguments over what does what and how. Remember, he's the master showman and he plays the press like a fiddle. What better way to generate buzz for Aqua than via an hour-long demo that conceals as much as it reveals? Personally, we're keeping hope alive that several of Aqua's less-friendly aspects, such as the cool-looking but confusing Dock, are going to be a lot more manageable when Mac OS X finally ships.

Okay, so Microsoft's a monopoly. More to the point, legally speaking, ever since Judge Jackson's momentous and ratings-boosting "findings of fact" in the "Redmond Justice" case, Microsoft's been found to be a monopoly that has used its monopoly power to extend its reach into other markets. While we'll have to wait for "findings of law" to see just what that behavior means from a legal standpoint, few people seem to doubt that, barring a settlement, Microsoft's going to be found guilty, guilty, guilty. So... Now what?

See, given how blatant Microsoft's been about strong-arming its competitors (not to mention how badly the Redmond lawyers bungled their case), proving the company guilty is the easy part. The tough bit is coming up with a remedy that would prevent Microsoft from repeating these antitrust infractions in the future. For a while now it's looked like the government's been leaning towards a fairly drastic action: that of breaking up the company into lots of "BabySofts." But what's this? A faithful viewer known only as The Operative from Damage Control whispers that some members of the government's team are going soft on the whole breakup option. The Los Angeles Times reports that Betty Montgomery, the attorney general of Ohio, is wussing out on the breakup and instead favors "curbing some of Microsoft's aggressive business practices by prescribing what actions the software giant can and cannot take in its business dealings." Because that worked so well the last time around. And "two other state officials" also say they've got their doubts about breaking up the company.

Now, personally, we at AtAT don't know if even a breakup is going to change things all that much. In fact, given the Windows stranglehold on the computing world at this late stage in the game, we can only assume that those government officials who think a breakup is "too drastic" are sniffing a bit too much Liquid Paper. We wish we had a better suggestion... Oh, what the heck-- let's just send everyone at Microsoft to the chair and be done with it. "Cruel and unusual" my Aunt Fanny.