The naysayers can prattle on about Apple's relatively small market share, its continuing inability to get Mac software onto store shelves, and its trailing position in the clock speed races-- but there's one thing they can't deny, and that's this: when it comes to pulling out of trade shows, Apple is the king, baby. Apple Expo 2000? Withdrawn. Internet World? No keynote for you. And now, the hat trick: according to MacGamer's Ledge, Apple has pulled out of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, known to those in the biz as "E3." What do we learn from this? Well, Apple may be serious about games-- but not nearly as serious as it is about retaining the expo-bailout crown. Priorities, people!

See, E3 is the big show to attend when it comes to what's hot in the gaming world. As such, in the past, you'd likelier find Apple hosting a pie-eating contest at the local county fair than bolstering the Mac's reputation as a "toy" by establishing a major presence at E3. That was before Apple's newfound love of games, however, and for the last couple of years, E3's been on Apple's short list of functions not to miss. We actually figured that, for once, Apple might really be serious about promoting the development of hit games on the Mac platform.

Well, you know how in the cartoons sometimes people's heads turn into giant suckers? This is one such occasion. Straight from the horse's mou-- er, statement: "After careful evaluation, Apple has decided not to exhibit at E3... our event strategy is a focused one and with InternetWorld, NAB, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and Macworld/NY happening in the next few months, we've got a full schedule." Gee, we're tempted to interpret this decision as proof that the gaming industry is no longer an extremely valuable market to Apple, and that it reflects a lack of commitment to its developers in this market. Oh, wait; "the gaming industry is an extremely valuable market to us and this in no way reflects our commitment to our developers in this market." Never mind...

Speaking of pulling out of trade shows, wouldja believe that those hale and hearty U.K. Mac fans are trying again? It's a classic example of the fabled British "stiff upper lip"; after all, Apple bailed on Apple Expo '98, Apple Expo '99 was cancelled due to Apple's continued noninvolvement, and Apple Expo 2000 (planned as a "this time, for sure" rave-up starring Steve Jobs himself) collapsed after Apple pulled out yet again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, I must be one of the Apple Expo U.K. organizers.

But their dogged perseverance is an inspiration to us all. According to MacCentral, those stubborn folks at IEC are now planning their own replacement show. "The Expo," as they're calling it (evidently in an attempt to cast off the bad luck associated with the Apple name), is slated to take place at London's Business Design Center on September 29th and 30th. And to jumpstart the understandably flagging enthusiasm of the U.K. Mac community, IEC is even offering free show passes to the first five thousand people to register.

The catch, of course, is that Apple probably won't show up. For one thing, the "official" Apple Expo in Paris is slated to run only a couple of weeks prior to this new London gig-- September 13th through 17th, to be precise. For another thing, well, if the past is anything to go by, the current Apple administration would sooner buy Gil Amelio a private jet than set foot in a London expo hall. And lastly, who says Apple's invited in the first place? If IEC's learned anything from the past, it's probably printing up special "you are cordially not invited" cards to send to Steve and the gang.

We'll say one thing for Mike Dell: he certainly doesn't make our job very hard sometimes. We've been watching his every move ever since that catty public remark back in 1997 about how, if he were running Apple, he'd have shut it down and given the money back to the stockholders. Well, since then he's managed to ape Apple's every move in a painfully transparent attempt to sculpt his own successful-but-styleless company into something with a but more of the Cupertino panache. It's not exactly a public retraction of his earlier regrettable remarks, but it's pretty much the same thing. So now we've got Dell colored consumer desktops, Dell colored consumer notebooks, Dell wireless networking-- heck, the list goes on forever.

Make that "forever plus one." According to AppleLinks, Dell's just adopted another Apple innovation: FireWire. The high-speed connectivity architecture known in drier circles as "IEEE 1394" hasn't caught on in the industry as quickly as we'd all hoped, but now that the iMac DV has given the technology a bit more visibility, we can't say we're surprised to hear that Dell's finally jumped on board. The Dell Dimension XPS T600 is a $1699 system that comes with "a 1394 PCI card pre-installed," which touts "the possibilities of digital video." See? Somebody's paying attention to those iMovie commercials.

It's a little early to tell, of course, but this means that those pundits who are claiming that digital video editing at the consumer level will never catch on are probably wrong yet again. Hey, chalk up another miserably off-the-mark prediction for John Dvorak; how many more does he need before he qualifies as the patron saint of the ridiculously short-sighted?