Okay, so we're slipping in our old age-- so shoot us. Faithful viewer Steve Pissocra lays the verbal smackdown for the egregious way in which we left out a key player in yesterday's bit about PC manufacturers ditching their ill-conceived attempts to cash in on the iMac stylewagon. As it turns out, not only did Dell quietly drop the WebPC from its pricelist, but Compaq also aborted its "stylish" Presario 3500. A CNET article has more details on this latest proof that the "color craze" is "fading." (We'd clarify that slightly: the "color craze" is indeed "fading"-- among PC manufacturers who do it poorly.)

Compaq's admission of failure is a little different from Dell's though. Dell's WebPC was very much an attempt to capture the iMac's target audience: people who want an inexpensive and easy-to-use personal computer that will get them on the Internet and will do it in style-- not to mention a choice of colors. Compaq's Presario 3500, on the other hand, was aimed more at the style-conscious power user willing to pay more for a sleek design and a "magnetic blue" color scheme. In that sense, we'd consider its audience more like that of the Power Mac G4 than that of the iMac-- especially given the 3500's sticker price of $1999. Still, a failure's a failure, and it just goes to show what happens when industrial design is treated as an afterthought instead of an inseparable factor in the overall birth of a computer.

Incidentally, it may not happen for you, but when we loaded up the CNET article, right next to the picture of the "stylish" 3500 that's been cast aside as a failed fashion experiment, there was a happy little button ad for the Apple Store touting the Power Mac G4. We just thought that was a nice little moment; Compaq's attempt at a sleek, cool-looking computer goes down in flames while Apple's triumph of industrial design is being actively advertised right next to the obituary. Sometimes everything just clicks into place, you know?

Those of you who, like most of us, are rotting your lives away slaving for The Man in some corporate cubicle farm probably harbor no illusions about the glory and dignity of a hard day's work done well. In fact, rather than clinging to some outdated and fanciful work ethic, you probably know full well that working is for chumps. Until we win the lottery, though, or some kind and extremely rich soul out there offers to pay us a tidy salary to keep cranking this show out day after day, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff is pretty much chained to this work-a-day world. Luckily, some of us still get to use Macs in the corporate realm, but those of you who are fortunate enough to share that enviable situation (while most others are force-fed a steady diet of Windows until their brains go limp and soggy) should fear no phrase more viscerally than this one: "single-platform."

Yes, "single-platform": that workplace harbinger of doom. Nary a day goes by without some IT department somewhere out there deciding to protect its support staff salary budget by persuading a management type with plenty of power and no clue that the best way to save money is to make the company single-platform and thus "reduce support costs." Unfortunately, when those guys start talking about "single-platform," what they're really saying is "Windows-only" (it's called job security-- more Windows equals more support), which bodes ill for that trusty Mac you've managed to cling to so far. Once the mandate to eliminate all Macs gets handed down, your days are pretty much numbered.

So when the IT trolls come and pry your beloved Mac from your white-knuckled fingers, you're left with only one viable move: go back to school. Why? Because there, "single-platform" isn't always a death sentence for Macs. Check it out; faithful viewer (and iMac-usin' AtAT Dad-- Hi, Dad!) Joseph Miller forwarded us an article from the Daily Illini which notes a single-platform migration at the University of Illinois that's good news for Mac users. Reportedly the student union computer lab, formerly a mixed bag of Macs and Wintels, is now an all-iMac shop. Pretty cool, huh? Especially for a school that was talking about moving exclusively to Windows systems a couple of years back.

Apparently Apple actually went to the school and offered to donate a slew of iMacs in return for being able to use photos of the lab in advertising materials. Smart move. Now if Apple would just pull that kind of stunt in the corporate world, we'd all be a lot better off. For one thing, we'd have a lot fewer Mac users leaving the work force for the more Apple-friendly pastures of a professional student career. Hmmm... How many degrees are too many, we wonder?

Hey, don't try to get us involved in some kind of Rumor War-- when it comes to confrontations on the web, AtAT likes to play Switzerland. Others can attack Mac OS Rumors from all sides, while we'll just remain stoically neutral and keep making our watches and chocolate. Then again, we suppose we can still tell you all about what's going on without actually choosing sides. Besides, we can never resist an interesting social experiment, and if the test is going to have any kind of valid outcome, it's imperative that people know what's going on.

So here's the scoop. As we mentioned yesterday, Mac OS Rumors posted some info about Apple's allegedly cube-shaped future Power Mac G4 enclosure at the start of the weekend, but by the time we actually visited the site, the content had been replaced by blurbs that said "Pulled at Apple's request." Well, as it turns out, several people still had copies of the nefarious "cube" report dredged out of the depths of their browser caches-- and one of them has posted a copy on Apple's own HomePage servers. However, he hasn't posted it to spread the Gospel According to MOSR; on the contrary, he's trying to prove that Mac OS Rumors lied about being forced to pull the story in hopes of generating credibility-- as in, "if Apple told them to pull it, it must be true!"

You can read "Alan Smithee's" public challenge and decide right away whether or not Mac OS Rumors is a "fraud," or you can wait for the outcome of Alan's little experiment. See, if Apple really demanded that MOSR pull the "cube" report, the company would logically also demand that any copies of that report get pulled from other publicly-accessible sites. Alan's betting that he never hears from Apple about this matter (despite the fact that the allegedly offending article is posted on Apple's very own servers), thus proving that MOSR faked the Apple mandate. Of course, this experiment won't prove a thing unless word gets out about the posted copy, so in the interest of science, we feel obligated to spread the word. Especially since Apple's currently taking a shellacking over at SlashDot by people chastising the company for repressing the truth, or whatever. We'd hate for Apple to take lumps for a "crime" it never actually committed. After all, there are already enough reasons to criticize Apple without people fabricating new ones.

Oh, one more interesting little tidbit: faithful viewer Phil Burk noticed an intriguing story over at The Mac Junkie, in which the author claims to have fabricated details about the cube G4 and sent them to Mac OS Rumors just to see if they'd get published. Sure enough, he claims that his lies showed up on the site on Saturday-- and were subsequently pulled "at Apple's request." Just one more data point to consider, which we pass on in the humble spirit of neutrality. Now if you'll excuse us, we have bank accounts to manage and multiple-tool army knives to assemble.