When it comes to priorities, we at AtAT place the welfare of our faithful viewers above all else (except for perhaps television, baked goods, and fried food). That's why we're a little hesitant to tell you that Apple may finally be trying to expand its market horizons and tackle the lucrative business market. Whereas most of you may consider that terrific news for the Mac's future as a viable and well-rounded platform, others may be reaching for the Maalox right about now, preparing for another spectacular failure.

Most of the latter group probably recall Apple's last half-hearted and tremendously ineffectual push to get the Mac perceived as a business computer; back in 1994 or so, when the first Power Macs were still shiny and new, Apple actually spent some time marketing them as, blandly enough, "The Business Macintosh." Needless to say, while small businesses were (and are) often perfectly happy running things on Macs, big businesses ignored Apple's pleas completely. Macs, after all, were still toys, and incapable of running big, serious applications that the enterprise market deemed all-important. (You know, ones running in DOS with archaic text-based interfaces and two-digit year fields that would crater in the year 2000.)

Since then, Apple's backed away from big business like Roger Ebert recoils from any movie starring Pauly Shore. The company has sought refuge in its core markets of education, consumer purchases, and content creation, adopting the attitude that if the business market wants to buy a few iMacs to put on the receptionists' desks, great, but no way would Apple actively court the enterprise market so soon after getting burned. Now, though, it looks like the healing period may be drawing to a close. Apple's shift from bright candy colors to Graphite and more muted tones was the first sign that Steve and the gang were starting to consider selling to the suits again. And now Apple's just issued a press release stating that Oracle has finally certified the Mac client for its E-Business Suite; it's running on Mac OS 9 right now, and will be certified for Mac OS X sometime next year.

Don't get super-excited about Oracle writing Mac applications, though-- the E-Business Suite is "a full suite of Web- and Java-based applications," so it wasn't exactly a tough porting job; heck, it should have been fully cross-platform from the start. Still, we're glad that Steve was finally able to get his bestest buddy Larry Ellison to improve Oracle's support for the Mac. Granted, this doesn't mean Apple's charging at the enterprise market with both guns a-blazing, especially since the press release makes it clear that the company's still targeting "small business." But it is a logical step in a dangerous-- though potentially incredibly rewarding-- direction. Once Mac OS X is out, its Unix guts may make Apple's products more attractive to the enterprise folks. From there, Apple could conceivably rework the iMac concept slightly and sell cheap, thin-client bMacs that NetBoot off of Mac OS X servers and run Microsoft Office, Oracle applications, etc. Let's just hope that next time around the strategy is more successful than "The Business Macintosh." Maybe we should buy Maalox stock now...

One could think of computer sales figures as a sort of popularity contest, right? Unfortunately, by that measure, Apple's G4 Cube is barely even Miss Congeniality. But while the Cube isn't very popular at the checkout line, it scored rave reviews from the pundits who gave it a test spin, and continues to rack up honors from various and sundry sources. Remember how the Cube won a Design & Engineering Award from Popular Mechanics a week or so ago? By extension, we'd logically have to assume that Apple's mini-Mac is, well, popular among mechanics. So that's one market that Apple should target, presumably with some kind of cross-marketing campaign with Car-X or something.

But when it comes to Cube-friendly markets, the mechanic population is just one slice of the pie. Another is perhaps less surprising: scientists. The Cube is wildly popular among scientists. Don't believe us? Well, what would you say if we told you that the Cube just won the "grand award for computers and technology" from Popular Science? That's indisputable evidence. We can't exactly prove it to you, because the magazine's web site still shows info about the November issue, but faithful viewer Shayon Ghosh swears to us that the Cube is the big winner in the December mag. So congratulations to everyone's favorite little inventory overstock item, and with luck, now that it's won these two accolades, swarms of mechanics and scientists will descend upon Apple retail outlets the world over and buy all those Cubes collecting dust on the shelves.

Since that's obviously going to happen any day now, we figure Apple should start cranking up production on more Cubes and lobbying for awards from other popular magazines, such as Popular Woodworking, Popular Ceramics, and Popular Hot Rodding. In addition to mechanics and scientists, soon the Cube will be sought after by legions of carpenters, sculptors, and automotive enthusiasts everywhere. Oh, and Apple? If you're tuned in, feel free to use our brilliant sales strategy at no charge. We'd ask you to send us a Cube as a token of thanks, but we realize those are going to be mighty scarce any day now-- so your undying gratitude is payment enough.

Big news, people-- there's been a death, and IBM discovered the body. It seems that IBM's CEO, Lou Gerstner, has been chatting to TechWeb about his company's ongoing revenue trouble, and at some point during the questioning he dropped the bomb that-- brace yourselves-- "the PC is dead." Yup, personal computers are pushing up the daisies, saith Lou, which came as rather a shock to us, since we're using one right now. Eeeyyeewwww. Aren't there laws against the desecration of a corpse?

Even ignoring that ickiness just for a moment, Lou revealed no details about the PC's cause of death, or even the circumstances under which the body was found-- although after AtAT sources reported that it was found sprawled alongside a bookcase and dead of blunt trauma, we're starting to suspect Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. In any event, the personal computer is evidently deader than a doornail, and therefore we have to expect that Apple will close its doors any minute now. See? Steve really should have started selling Apple handhelds back when he had the chance. Who knew that the cancellation of the Newton would prove to be Apple's fatal mistake?

Oh, wait a minute... we just noticed that by his own admission, Lou's been saying "the PC is dead" for two full years now. Sounds like a "sky is falling" doomsday prediction to us. Given the fact that personal computers still get sold at a reasonable clip, we have to assume that Lou's going to keep repeating his personal mantra until it finally turns out to be true. Either that, or he's right already and all of our Macs are zombies. We're not going to worry until we hear the "Fred" Text-To-Speech voice intoning "Brains... Brains..."