When you think about it, there's something terribly satisfying about all this rumor and speculation that's been kicked up by the claim that Apple's ad agency, Chiat-Day, has been engaging in some questionable practices to-- you guessed it-- prevent rumor and speculation. A few days ago, ZDNet ran an article claiming that Chiat-Day has been demanding signed affidavits from Mac publications, swearing that the magazines wouldn't engage in "publishing rumors or speculation about Apple or Mac." ZDNet claimed that publications who refused to comply would lose Apple's ad business.

Personally, we at AtAT didn't see anything particularly wrong with that alleged strategy, other than the fact that collecting these written pledges to stay rumor-free seemed a tad overly-eccentric. Apple should spend its advertising dollars wherever it feels it will most benefit the company, and we can only assume that people who see this as a censorship or First Amendment issue are privy to some law regulating Apple's ad budget distribution that no one told us about. In any case, Chiat-Day (who kept mum for the last article) has finally given its side of the story to ZDNet: according to the ad agency, this is all just business as usual.

Yes, Chiat-Day claims that Apple had nothing to do with the agency's recent attempt to secure written no-rumors promises from the likes of Macworld and MacAddict. These overtures were "strictly routine" for Chiat-Day-- "part of our normal process with publications," according to Jeremy Miller, the agency's public relations director. "Apple didn't have any knowledge of the situation." Apparently this is something that Chiat-Day does for all of its clients.

Wow. Maybe it's our overly-suspicious nature kicking into hyperdrive, here, but we find that a little hard to swallow. Given Apple's holy crusade against Mac rumors over the past couple of years, it's a little hard to believe that Chiat-Day's recent "routine" actions are simply a coincidence. Perhaps we'd be a little more likely to believe the agency if we found out that, say, NewsWeek had to promise not to speculate about future Levi's jeans, or Fox couldn't air any Taco Bell ads until they promised not to broadcast any rumors about that chihuahua.

Micromanagement isn't always a bad thing. Sure, we imagine it can be a little nervewracking at times to be an Apple engineer or designer, what with Steve hovering over one's shoulder and issuing edicts like "move that button one pixel to the left" or "that shade of blue still isn't lickable enough-- make it shinier" or "only a bozo would think that-- clean out your desk." After hearing about his close personal involvement with typically un-CEO areas like product development and writing commercials, we have to wonder if Steve also makes the coffee, empties the trash bins, and does night stints as an Apple security guard. But after all, it's that kind of hands-on approach to Apple's day-to-day operation that was largely responsible for the company's salvation. Somebody had to get his hands dirty and force things back on track again.

And sometimes Steve's apparent deeply-held conviction that "delegate" is a four-letter word can lead to some pleasant surprises. In particular, it seems that Apple's multibillionaire iCEO still occasionally leaps in to handle customer complaints in person. According to MacCentral, one unhappy customer named Kevin Pedraja who suffered from that "rumored" cracked Cube malady fired off an angry fax addressed directly to Mr. Jobs. The results were impressive; first an Apple representative "promptly offered to replace" the cracked Cube with a brand spankin' new one, and then the customer actually received a phone call from Steve himself. "I was pretty impressed that he would call me personally. Not many CEOs would do that," said Pedraja.

Okay, fine, so Pedraja just happens to be a public relations executive. And his "strongly-worded" fax just happened to include a threat about taking the issue to the press. Surely you're not so jaded and cynical that you think Steve wouldn't have called if his company hadn't been threatened with a PR disaster? For shame! As an unnamed Apple spokeswoman assures us all, "it isn't unusual for Mr. Jobs or other Apple executives to check in with concerned customers from time to time." There you are; Apple said it, so it's true.

Still not satisfied? Well, if you won't take Apple's word for it, how about ours? While we have to remain maddeningly vague about the nature of the issue, one AtAT viewer reports that he, too, received a call from Steve in response to a complaint he made about a recent Apple purchase, and that Steve saw to it that the problem was "made right." That doesn't mean that the man can handle every single customer complaint and personally see that all problems are fixed, but it does mean that Apple is paying attention to its customers and trying to keep them satisfied with their purchases-- which makes us feel all warm and sunny inside. Of course, that doesn't mean you should expect a personal phone call from Steve if, say, your Power Mac arrives DOA. There are only so many hours in the day, and someone's got to fix the photocopier...

When the public beta of Mac OS X shipped just a day before Microsoft's latest consumer operating system, Windows Me, we knew we were looking at a ready-made cage match in the battle for public opinion. It's not exactly a fair fight, to be sure; for one thing, Mac OS X is only in beta, whereas Windows Me is a finished product-- or, at least, it's finished by Microsoft's standards. On the other hand, though, Windows Me is barely an update, whereas Mac OS X is a completely new operating system that's been anxiously awaited by legions of Mac fans. So maybe it all balances out.

Or maybe not. We won't list all the various reviews and articles on these two operating systems that have been published in the past week, but we've definitely noticed an overall trend in the reporting: Mac OS X is garnering some seriously good ink, while the media response to Windows Me has been lackluster at best, and fuming at worst. For a couple of (admittedly drastic) examples, first consider what BusinessWeek had to say about our beloved public beta: "Apple's OS X Looks Like a 10... With OS X, Apple is actually leaping ahead of Linux and Windows... OS X is really cool." Now consider what ZDNet had to say about Microsoft's offering: "Windows Me isn't Microsoft's shining hour... I can save you reading the rest of this column by offering a single word of advice: Don't... This is a cynical attempt to get your money."

Of course, if the Mac OS X public beta is selling like hotcakes (the Apple Store reportedly expects sales of a hundred thousand copies in the first week), then Windows Me is selling like hotcakes with Pokémon on them. The Register reports that Microsoft has sold 250,000 copies in its first four days on the market. Those numbers don't mean much when compared to one another, given that the products are selling to two completely different markets, but hey, we still found them interesting.

As for our own thoughts on the public beta, while we've finally gotten a couple of hours to sit down and give it a spin, we can't say much here other than "thumbs up." We hope to broadcast a completely separate special report this weekend, so hang in there.