It's March-- just about time for Apple to do something to stir up trouble, right? Everybody knows about Steve Jobs's "a surprise every 90 days" initiative; it's a great way to keep the mainstream press interested so Apple stays in the public eye. But what most people don't know is that there's also a secret strategy that's been working wonders for Apple for the past year or two-- Operation Hornet's Nest. The idea is to alienate the living bejeezus out of Apple's loyal installed base, and then "do the right thing" just before the villagers storm the citadel with pitchforks and torches. To the best of our knowledge, the original iMac modem specification was an early test-run of this plan; Apple announced that the iMac would ship with a 33.6 kbps modem, lots and lots of Macfolk complained, and by the time the iMac actually reached store shelves, the company was able to trumpet that it had listened to its customers and switched to a 56K modem instead.

The early success of the iMac modem fracas (and its developer-targeted original inspiration, the QuickTime 3 licensing hullaballoo of early 1998) has since led Apple to pull all kinds of nonsense specifically designed to raise the hackles of various segments of the Mac community. Remember the Blue Blocker scandal? Apple alienated thousands of blue-and-white Power Mac G3 owners by issuing a firmware update that secretly rendered G3 systems incapable of using G4 upgrade cards. Eventually the uproar started to fade when third-party upgrade manufacturers "discovered" ways around the problem. What you may not realize is that Apple itself leaked the key to circumventing the firmware block; Blue Blocker was engineered to generate controversy, and nothing more.

Then there was that whole G4 Speed Dump goofiness. It's crazy enough that any company could seriously consider slowing down its entire line of professional computers while keeping prices the same... but to cancel all existing orders for the systems, too, forcing customers to reorder at the higher prices? Absurd. No company would ever do that-- unless the plan was simply to generate a ton of controversy by alienating all those G4 early adopters. Within a week, Apple issued an apology and reinstated those orders, and all was well. Sensing a pattern yet? Apparent boneheaded move, followed by an overt or behind-the-scenes rectification of said issue after the fur flies in the Macintosh-oriented and general media? After all, there's no such thing as bad press.

Anyway, it seems that this time around, Apple's working hard to alienate AppleWorks users. A mere glance at the bile issuing forth from MacInTouch's Reader Report on the just-released AppleWorks 6 unveils a treasure trove of trouble some people are calling "AppleWorks Sux." Among the complaints are hideous slowdowns, nasty crashes, a butchered interface (shades of Aqua, anyone?), far too few new features to justify the $79 price tag, and no upgrade pricing for those who already own a previous version of the software. And get this-- they removed the file translators that enabled AppleWorks 5 to read and write Office files, etc. Right on schedule! Now let's see how long Apple strings us all along before an AppleWorks 6.0.1 release and a revised pricing structure makes everyone happy again. Er, this was intentional, wasn't it, folks?...

So we originally praised the concept of iReview, that portion of Apple's Internet strategy that aimed to review web sites of all types and let iTools members add their own two cents to the mix. It was a great idea on paper (or, at least, a great idea during a keynote address), but the implementation was sorely lacking. For instance, when the service was launched in early January, there were a scant eleven sites reviewed under the "Computers" heading. Only four of those were Mac-specific sites, and three of them-- MacWEEK, Macworld Online, and MacCentral-- were all owned by Ziff-Davis. Worse yet, the fourth wasn't even AtAT, much to our chagrin. (At least it was MacFixit, one of our personal faves-- so we guess we can let it slide.)

What we can't dismiss so easily, however, was Apple's utter sloth in adding new iReviews. For almost two full months, the only new reviews we noticed were contributed by stalwart iTools members trying to make up for Apple's slovenliness. We had just about given up on iReview altogether as a neat idea that Apple couldn't stick with, when lo and behold, iReview was finally updated late last week. And what an update it was! For example, you know those eleven sites listed under "Computers"? We're sure they're not lonely anymore, now that there are twelve instead. Yes, in Apple's infinite wisdom, after two months of idleness, they added a whopping one site. And in yet another slight we're not so quick to shrug off, it still isn't AtAT-- it's Real Networks.

Okay, okay, so we'll take what we can get. The truly funny bit is just how transparent Apple has become in its intentions; read the Real Networks iReview and tell us it's not just a great big ad for QuickTime and QTV. Oh, sure, QuickTime's not mentioned in Apple's official iReview (though it's pushed quite a bit in the member-contributed addenda), but c'mon-- this is an election year here in the U.S., and we can all spot a negative ad when we see one, right? The bottom line here is that, no matter how many times faithful viewers like Carlos Perez suggest that iReview tune into AtAT, our little show is obviously never going to be listed among the handful of heavy-hitters. Not while Apple's cozying up to the ZDNet Triumverate and panning its own competitors, at any rate. And even if we had a snowball's chance in Cupertino before, we're sure we blew it with this scene. ;-)

And to continue this unusually downbeat episode (we must need more vitamins or something), we return once more to the Megahertz Wars, where the Mac is still getting its metaphorical behind swatted like there's no tomorrow. In terms of overall speed, the Power Mac G4 is still one blazing system-- but it's tough to get all gung-ho about its top clock speed being cranked up to a blinding 500 MHz when those in the Wintel camp are tossing around 800 MHz like it ain't no thing. Gee, whatever happened to those early promises of the PowerPC reaching higher clock speeds than CISC chips could ever hope to attain? It just goes to show you what some competition can do; AMD and its zippy little Athlon gave Intel a nasty shock, and the boys in the bunny suits managed to strap still more rocket power onto that aging old architecture that dates back to the Stone Age, processorily speaking.

Well, here's the really depressing news: AMD and Intel are locked in a race to announce the first 1 GHz chip designed for desktop use. According to a CNET article, AMD's in the lead; those wacky chip-heads are expected to unveil a 1 GHz Athlon on Monday, while Intel's 1 GHz Pentium III is currently still slated for an introduction this coming Wednesday. Meanwhile, Apple's marketing team is left with the unenviable task of trying to convince the world that a chip running at no more than half the clock speed of these new processors is somehow faster. "Uh, did we mention that it comes housed in a really snazzy-looking Graphite case?"

And things are probably only going to get worse before they get any better. The Athlon architecture reportedly has room to grow, and while the Pentium III's way past the end of its megahertz life span, Intel's got Willamette due for release "toward the middle of the year"-- and it's expected to debut at 1.4 GHz. And let's see, the G4 isn't expected to crank up the juice until when-- this fall, right? Hunker down, 'cause it sounds like it might be a long, hard battle ahead...