If Mac the Knife's sources can be trusted, Apple's next round of "Think Different" ads will include the image of deceased Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia.

Now, there were bad vibes a-plenty when Apple used the image of John Lennon in its ads, not to mention Gandhi. The question in our minds is, will there be more uproar over the use of Jerry Garcia's image, or less? Most of the deadheads among the Mac brethren may be pretty relaxed about it all, but we're guessing at least a few will be upset with the appropriation of Jerry's face by a multi-billion-dollar corporation for the purpose of selling computers, despite the fact that Jerry's estate must have given permission. But the biggest opposition to using Jerry in the ads may come from people who will say that Apple is endorsing drug use and the deadhead lifestyle-- not appropriate, they'll say, for a computer supposedly committed to the education of our children.

Of course, that's part of the point of the "Think Different" campaign-- to provoke a response and get people thinking. A little healthy debate (and extra publicity) never hurt anyone. Keep on truckin'.

As we've been discussing over the last few episodes, the central issue in Microsoft's upcoming January 13th contempt hearing is whether Microsoft can be penalized for following the letter of the injunction is such a way as to defeat its obvious intent. Judge Jackson and a technician functionally removed Internet Explorer from Windows 95 in a matter of 90 seconds, which certainly has the effect that the judge intended. Microsoft claims that removing the browser from Windows 95--all of it, including its dynamically-linked libraries--renders the OS unusable, but that's what the judge asked for.

Well, PC Week appears to be siding against Microsoft on this debate. In their labs, they claim that they were able to prevent IE from loading by modifying only four lines in a Windows 95 setup file. The result, they say, was a current version of Windows 95 that contained all of the improvements made since that OS's initial release and ran perfectly well, but that lacked Internet Explorer. Moreover, they claim that the browserless version is "much better suited for corporate deployment," and that based on their tests, a browserless version of Windows 98 will work the same way.

Microsoft's likely to point out that PC Week's four-line disabling move does not comply with the wording of Jackson's temporary injunction, which requires the removal of "the software code that Microsoft itself now separately distributes at retail as Internet Explorer." But if PC Week's reconfiguration prevents the loading of all of the IE code, couldn't it then be removed from the hard disk without harm?

The results are in for BYTE magazine's 1997 Editor's Choice Awards, and Apple walked away with a few honors. You can read about it in a self-congratulatory Apple press release.

Mac OS 8 and the Powerbook 3400 both won Awards of Distinction, while the Powerbook 2400 garnered an Award of Merit. It's great to see the Powerbooks winning awards, and hopefully putting the spectre of the 5300's (known far and wide as the "Powerbook Flambé") to rest once and for all. It's especially gratifying that the 3400 won an award, because the G3 outpaces it strongly-- and all reports so far say that the next-generation Powerbooks, code-named Wall Street and Main Street, kick even more butt. (For more information on these next-gen laptops, you may want to dig around our favorite source of Powerbook info: O'Grady's PowerPage.)

As for Mac OS 8 winning an Editor's Choice Award from a primarily PC-oriented magazine, well, that's just pretty darn cool.