Okay, we're all for a healthy dose of minimalism-- "Simplify, simplify" and all that-- but does anyone get the feeling that Apple may be taking the philosophy to some rather extreme ends? Take the Cube-- there are a lot of things it doesn't have compared to its less forward-looking brethren: there's no fan, no slots, no tools needed to open it up, no mechanical power button (it's an electrostatically sensitive proximity sensor instead), no visible ports until you turn the thing over, and darn near no space taken up on your desk. Most of that's good. But we had a one-button mouse; now we've got a no-button mouse. And perhaps most perplexing of all, the new keyboard's got more keys, sure, but no power key. Lots of people, right or wrong, seem to be complaining about the missing power key.

But that's a mere trifle, because if InkWell catches on, pretty soon those same people are going to be complaining about the missing keyboard. Faithful viewer Chris Turner pointed out a ZDNet News scoop on the migration of the Newton's best-of-breed handwriting recognition to Mac OS X; regular viewers will recall that we first broached the subject back when the Naked Mole Rat hinted at this intriguing possibility. InkWell, as this project will allegedly be called, is intended to work with stylus-input graphics tablets and maybe even upcoming PowerBook trackpads. It lets users write naturally and watch their scrawl magically transform into editable text. A Mac OS 9 version is reportedly also under consideration. Now, as a supplementary input method it sounds pretty keen, but Apple's goal with this project? "To eliminate the need for a keyboard," according to the ever-popular "source familiar with Apple's plans."

And we, for one, welcome the change. Sure, keyboard entry may be a zillion times faster for most people than handwriting, but it's hardly as elegant. Which is why, in the not-too-distant future, all Macs will ship sans keyboard-- after all, if the floppy is dead, then the keyboard is utterly fossilized. In fact, we have it on good authority that the missing power key on the new Pro Keyboard is Apple's first step in the initiative to wean the Mac community from keyboard use one key at a time. ("But then how come they just added the forward-delete key, the numerical keypad, and all that stuff?" you ask. Pipe down, junior-- we're on a roll, here.) What does this mean for the future of the platform? Well, once typing is abolished, we'll all be free of the lurking horror of carpal tunnel syndrome-- and plagued with writer's cramp instead. Oh, and by the way: we wouldn't get too attached to that mouse, either, if we were you.

Call us nuts, but sometimes we miss those heady days of Apple back in the mid-'90s. Yes, those were the days of Copland and the failed cloning initiative and a zillion other Apple missteps that almost killed the company, but at least we still had our illusions about how the PowerPC was going to bankrupt Intel "any day now." Remember that classic spiel about how CISC was dead, and RISC would rule the world? How about that brief, shining moment when Power Computing's 225 MHz PowerTower Pro had a faster clock speed than Intel's zippiest Pentium Pro? Ah, memories...

Fast-forward back to the present, and sure, Apple's finances, product line, and overall strategy are orders of magnitude better-- but when it comes to the Megahertz Wars, the PowerPC is getting stomped like a grape. One year in the computer industry is like seven years in a dog's life (or something like that), and yet it was almost one year ago that Apple announced the G4/500. What do we have now instead? Two G4/500s. Sure, multiprocessing is cool, but the chip itself is unchanged (other than the fact that it's actually shipping these days). It still "languishes" at 500 MHz while Intel and AMD chips top the 1 GHz barrier. We haven't seen product development that stagnant since WordPerfect for Macintosh.

Meanwhile, the next PowerPC, dubbed the "G4+" and announced way back in October, is still nowhere in sight. The Register takes a little peek at this next iteration in the G4's development, and technologically speaking, it's all good news: more processing units, faster and larger cache, and a longer instruction pipeline to allow higher clock speeds-- starting at 700 MHz. The problem? No ship date. But Motorola has apparently hinted that the G4+ will roughly follow the same timeline that the G4 took, indicating a release "real soon now." Forgive us if we don't hold our breath. We'll just be happy if Motorola can ship in volume before the end of the year, so Apple can get the PowerBook G4 out in time for January's Expo.

Hey, do any of you classic TV fans remember an old courtroom drama called "Redmond Justice"? It's been a long time, we know, but in the grand tradition of shows that churn on seemingly forever like some deranged Energizer Bunny, it's back and ready to rock. Or, more accurately, to crawl, at the internationally-renowned pace of the U.S. justice system. The story so far: Microsoft broke more antitrust laws than most legal experts even knew existed; David Boies and the rest of the government's legal team ran rings around the company in court; Judge Jackson found them guilty, guilty, guilty; the government tried to kick the appeal upstairs to the Supreme Court; and now Microsoft has filed its official objection to that Appeals-Court-bypassing plan.

According to a ComputerWorld story, Microsoft's basic argument is that the case is just far "too messy" for the Supreme Court to tackle. In its filing, the company says the case involves "a morass of procedural and substantive issues that can be resolved only through a painstaking review of a lengthy and technologically complex trial record." Hmmm, sounds like Microsoft's case in no small part resembles Microsoft's products. (Bug list, anyone?) Anyway, the company is basically telling the Supreme Court, "trust us on this one-- you don't want to get involved." We've got to wait until at least October to find out whether the Supreme Court feels up to the task, or whether it would rather let a historically Microsoft-friendly Appeals Court untangle the stickier issues first.

Meanwhile, though, Microsoft also managed to use its filing to throw in a few well-placed jabs at Judge Jackson. A Reuters article notes some of the juicier excerpts: apparently the company feels that the judge's willingness to grant interviews about the case raises "serious questions" about his "impartiality," and "betrays a misguided belief" that the Justice Department was "entitled to the remedy of its choice, no matter how extreme." In other words: "Wah, wah, wahhh... the mean ol' judge only gave us a million years in which to settle, and then he accepted a breakup proposal without letting us stall for another six months." Hey, what can we say? Some people are never satisfied.