Apple, under Steve Jobs' direction, announced last August that they would concentrate their efforts on the two markets in which the Mac truly excels: content creation, and education. Well, that's all well and good (provided something actually gets done about them someday-- where are the Pixel-Pusher specials, with high-powered graphics capability, super-fast disks, tons of RAM, and Photoshop/Pagemaker/Illustrator preinstalled? Or a low-cost education system with easily-replaceable components for simple lab maintenance? Or, for that matter, anything to demonstrate this so-called commitment to those core markets?).

But what about the home market? Apple is implying that it's conceding that ground to Microsoft/Intel, as if that war is already lost. But MacCentral doesn't think that's wise, citing the recent Dataquest figures that show personal computers in 43% of U.S. homes. According to Dataquest, a full "10% of U.S. households plan to buy computers in the next six months." When you think about it, that's a lot of potential income. So why would Apple shrink from competing in a market that, based on technical merits and common sense, should be an easy victory? After all, you'd think home users would want, first and foremost, a machine that works and is easy to use and maintain.

The biggest reason is not the lack of an Apple presence in retail, nor is it the Wintel marketing juggernaut's total dwarfing of any Apple advertising presence. And believe it or not, we don't think it's even the massive public perception that Apple is dead or dying. Apple is not going after the home market for the simple reason that the remaining 57% of U.S. homes are no way, no how going to pay over $2000 for a computer system. The people who want to spend that much on a computer have already bought; the remainder want sub-$1000 systems, and Apple doesn't have one. Should they have one? The profit margins on such boxes are razor-thin. Is it worth the effort, especially at a time when Apple must be so careful about allocating resources? Well, think of it this way: If Apple waits another six months to go after the consumer market, that 10% of U.S. households ready to buy will already have bought-- and they'll have bought Wintel.

Despite their public contention that Judge Jackson's preliminary injunction (which temporarily prohibits them from forcing Wintel manufacturers to install Internet Explorer on all Windows 95 machines) doesn't worry them, Microsoft is appealing Jackson's injunction on the grounds that it "improperly expands the scope" of the Justice Department's antitrust action. Microsoft's argument is that if the judge rejected the DoJ's $1 million-a-day contempt request (which he did), the case should have ended there-- he had no right, they say, to issue the preliminary injunction.

According to thessaSOURCE, Microsoft additionally says that the injunction sets "a dangerous precedent" that lets the government interfere with product design. AtAT admits that it's beyond us how not letting Microsoft require the bundling of IE represents a threat to the American way (since manufacturers are still free to ship IE if they want to-- and, since Microsoft claims that's what the customers want, they should have nothing to worry about), but that's just us.

In conclusion, never let it be said that AtAT claims Microsoft has never had appeal.

Remember www.microsnot.com? They may have been dethroned as the king of all Microsoft parody sites by www.winblows.com. Although this site is really just a great big ad for Palladium's upcoming CD-ROM-based parody called Microshaft Winblows 98, it's still a fun little romp. For the most part, we were impressed (the Microsoft Acquires Christmas article is seasonal and funny), though we were a little nonplussed at the fact that the downloadable screen saver is Windows-only.

Palladium's humor division, Parroty Interactive, will debut the Winblows 98 CD-ROM at the MacWorld Expo, where they are expecting a warmer reception than the one they received at COMDEX. Apparently at that event, the Microshaft team (including their Bill Gates impersonator) was booted out for giving away Microshaft pins and cards. How rude...