The bad news: Macs, once forming a disproportionately large percentage of the online community, now account for only a little over 3% of the computers surfing the 'net. The good news: that's actually up a little bit compared to six months ago. So, three percent and gaining fast! Well, okay, make that "gaining slowly"; the ZDNet AnchorDesk article touting the numbers calls Apple's increase a "very modest rise." Still, it's a positive change, right?

But let's take a closer look at these numbers for a second. They come from some outfit called StatMarket, a division of "WebSideStory" (ugh), who claims to give "accurate Internet statistics and user trends in real time." What they don't claim is to be unbiased, and it's a darn good thing, given the top story on their home page: "Windows 98 Usage At All-Time High, Especially Among Home Users." This little article breaks the stunning news that use of Windows 98 has "nearly doubled in use" over the past year. Well, duh. Go to any computer superstore and try to buy a non-Mac consumer system without Windows 98. You'd have better luck buying bondage gear in Crate And Barrel. The Register has an interesting take on this very article in its story on "momentum marketing," hinting that Microsoft might be a "significant customer" of WebSideStory-- but of course, that's just a guess.

Now, here's the thing about WebSideStory's usage statistics: they're based solely on visits to web sites using something called "HitBox," which is a real-time traffic analysis system. If the site isn't using HitBox, visits to it don't count towards those stats. (Suppose Microsoft's site is a HitBox customer?) Less than a year ago, HitBox was a Windows-only service, meaning not many Mac-oriented webmasters were likely to use it. These days it appears to be platform-independent, but unless you want a big HitBox ad on every page of your site, you've got to pay for the service, and unless you're a big company overflowing with cash, it ain't exactly cheap. Suffice to say, AtAT won't be signing up anytime soon.

But what about Apple? We know Apple's got cash, and we know Apple.com's got traffic; wouldn't it be interesting to see what happens to those stats if Apple paid to put its web site on HitBox? The daily sample of page views listed by HitBox is about 43 million; recently Apple logged 961,000 "unique visitors" in a week. Even if each of those visitors only looked at, say, three pages (almost certainly a low estimate), by our count, Apple's traffic would account for about 1% of the whole pool. Assuming a fairly Mac-heavy mix of visitors to Apple's site, we think Apple could make those numbers dance. By our estimates, a "Pro" account with Apple's level of traffic would cost something like $8000 a month. Isn't that a small price to pay for the ensuing news articles showing Mac Internet usage doubling in a month, or whatever?

And for those of you who don't tune in every single day and memorize every little plot twist on our show, we'd like to point out that in April of last year, WebSideStory reported that only 2.68% of web surfers were using Macs. So by their own biased statistics, the percentage of Macs in use on the 'net has increased over 17% in less than a year. How's that for a silver lining?

Speaking of that article in The Register, it's worth a second look. Faithful viewers Porsupah and Russell Maggio both pointed it out, and the very title should appeal to you drama-fiends out there: "Is MS heading for a share price meltdown?" The gist is that Microsoft may be relying on some tricky manuevers to "give a little upward nudge to its sluggish share price." Say what you will about Microsoft; few will deny that when it comes to marketing and spin, they are masters in the field. (Okay, so Microsoft Bob was a pretty serious blunder... geez, everyone has an off day.)

In particular, Microsoft is extremely adept at "momentum marketing," a technique that's on a par with FUD, or "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt." For instance, apparently last June Microsoft published a story with a headline that read, "Windows CE devices outsell 3COM PalmPilot 3 to 1." Scratching your head? Wondering how that fits in with all you know about how Palm's kicking WinCE to pieces in the handheld market? Well, it seems that Microsoft's story focused on "one retail store in Paris." But the headline is what people remember. Sneaky, right? But smart. It's mind share; if enough people carry around the notion that WinCE is three times as popular as Palm, it'll eventually become true.

Microsoft pulls that kind of stuff all the time. Remember last year, when they were forced to admit that they had fudged the download numbers for Internet Explorer 4? The Register also points out a past instance in which Microsoft had artificially inflated the Windows 95 sales numbers to persuade more people to climb on board the bandwagon. And when Windows NT was a slow seller in its infancy, reportedly the company combined its sales numbers with those of Windows 95 "to create the impression that NT was doing well, when in fact sales were very slow indeed." So in light of these past tactics, what do you think about Microsoft's recent announcement that Windows 2000 sales are "higher than expectations"? The company never said what its expectations actually were, but the spin apparently worked-- MSFT rose $5 the next day, in stark contrast to its lackluster performance right after Win2K was first released. You really have to hand it to Microsoft's spin doctors-- they earn their paychecks.

Oh, how life imitates art. Or at least art imitates hoax. See, back in early January, when the pre-Expo rumors were at their peak, our mailbox got flooded with all kinds of predictions as to what Uncle Steve would unveil onstage. Pismo-- of course. New iBooks with DVD-ROM drives-- natch. And let's not forget the perennial favorite, the iMac with the seventeen-inch screen. Of course, none of those came to pass (at least, not at that particular event), and most of them were fairly believable rumors. For instance, we admit, we were as surprised as you were not to see Pismo. But we heard other rumors that we pretty much dismissed as hoaxes right out of the gate. In particular, we're thinking about the anonymous tip we received that Steve would introduce a Pikachu-edition iMac. The words "yeah, right" sprung to mind.

When we referred to that rumor, a faithful viewer known as Cyril told us that he'd seen a joke mock-up of a Pikachu iMac a while back, and even put the image on his web page. That was good for a chuckle. But what do we have here? Faithful viewer Matt Johnson made our day by pointing out that what appears to be a real Pikachu iMac is being auctioned off on eBay right now. No joke! Those photos look legit. It's a Tangerine iMac 333 tricked out to the gills: it's been upgraded to 467 MHz, and it has 128 MB of RAM, a 20 GB hard drive, a mouse that "lights up lightning-blue when clicked" (yeah!), and, of course, it looks just like everyone's favorite Pokémon. It's got a "custom 3-layer (at least) paint job with frost finish for soft fuzzy look" and "soft felt ears with velcro for posing and felt tail." Folks, we're not fans of the Pokémon phenomenon (though we don't particularly have anything against it, either), but this thing is cool.

There are no bids yet, so this work of art can be yours. Bidding starts at $2000-- Sure, it sounds expensive, but consider all those upgrades, and remember that this is a one-of-a-kind deal-- "only one will be built." Of course, we suppose you could use the tips in our guide to painting Macs and create your own, but for the cash-and-carry, gotta-catch-'em-all collectors out there, we're sure this will be of interest. Heck, it's eBay; somebody's gonna buy this thing.