Remember the "single strong candidate" for Apple CEO that Larry Ellison mentioned a while back? Well, whether or not that candidate was Lee Iacocca, he or she has flown the coop, leaving Apple with nobody on deck and a scant four weeks to go until MacWorld Expo, which many consider to be an important deadline by which Apple needs to find a new leader. Read more at the San Jose Mercury News. It's looking more than ever like, well, nobody's quite insane enough to take the job.

Except, of course, for our all-time favorite insane guy, Steve Jobs himself. This latest glitch in the ongoing search has led some people to turn, once again, to the possibility of Jobs finally taking the position, just to be done with the hell of interviewing. Sure, he's publicly turned down the job twice already, but the third time's the charm. (AtAT's newly-formed conspiracy theory is that the "CEO search" is just a blind, and will stretch on for years-- allowing Steve Jobs to remain the "interim" CEO in name, while being the permanent CEO in actuality. That way, he doesn't have to renege on his promise to Pixar not to take the post.)

Just in case we're wrong (naaaahhhhhh...), it sounds like literally nobody is currently being considered. So, how about it? Apple's hard up for possibilities. Are you between jobs? Or maybe your current position leaves something to be desired. Why not send a resumé to Apple? You never know just how desperate they must be getting by now. "You say you've used a Mac for two years, and you once balanced your checknook? Sign here, you're hired."

Hmmm, gotta wonder if the recent planetary alignment had anything to do with the latest Microsoft timing fiasco. Just as they get their day in court to fight for their right to force the installation of Internet Explorer on every Windows 95 computer that ships, an uproar breaks out about how the latest Option Pack for Windows NT requires the installation of that selfsame browser. CNet has the story.

You can see the instructions for installing the Option Pack on Microsoft's web site: "Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 must be installed on the target system before you install the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack... This does not prohibit your use of other browsers... download IE 4.01 now!" Yet this odd requirement has sysadmins the world over wondering why on earth they need to install IE just to install this Option Pack. Is it Microsoft trying its darnedest to put IE on every machine it can, or is this really just due to some particularity about the code for the NT web server? Regardless, it's certainly poor timing that this issue would arise smack-dab in the middle of the DoJ flap.

Congratulations, by the way, to Microsoft's executive vice president of sales and support Steve Ballmer, who managed to use the phrase "odd confluence of events" three times in five sentences. That takes some serious talent. Or something.

Whining about the technical deficiencies of the Mac OS is nothing new to id programmer John Carmack, who brought the world classic gore games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Ports of all of those games made it to the Mac (eventually), but Quake 2, which just got released on the PC end, is "not going to be on MacOS 8," which Carmack describes as "crusty" and unworthy of his respect. However, it's long bee known that he's a big NeXT fan, and he pledges to "personally port the stuff to Rhapsody and make it a high-quality implementation for people that want to take a step into the future of Apple." Read all about this (and a LOT more) at BootNet.

Personally, we can live with Quake 2 not being on Mac OS 8 if there's a top-notch Rhapsody port. For one thing, recall that Mac OS 9 (Allegro) may include Yellow Box, allowing the Rhapsody version to run. For another thing, what little that we've seen of Quake 2 isn't really all that interesting. We'll reserve final judgement until we actually get to play the thing, of course.

For those of you who realize how important games are to the computer market, you know how crucial it is for a bigwig like John Carmack to embrace Rhapsody. The most interesting statement in the tremendously long interview is when Carmack says that "if Apple doesn't curl up and die and Rhapsody turns out to be everything that it looks like it's going to be, then next year we might jump ship and develop on Rhapsody and port to Windows." Now that we'd love to see.