Well, it may have happened three weeks ago, but you know our motto: "If we haven't seen it, it's new to us!" Everybody following our little drama here is well aware of the years-long ongoing catfight between Steve Jobs and Mike Dell, just as you all know that the latest battleground in this epic struggle of mercurial vs. mediocre is the education market. Ol' Mikey's been less than subtle about his triumph in wresting the educational sales crown away from Steve, as school boards with ever-tightening budgets are all too willing to save a few bucks by buying Dells instead of Macs-- at the cost of the students' educational experience, of course, but hey, when was the last time anyone put a price tag on that? Whatever. In any case, schools are now buying more computers from Dell than from Apple, and only those with the hardest of hearts and/or the thickest of skulls would deny that such a situation is both sick and wrong on a number of levels.

But do you suppose that the giddy thrill of victory has made Mike a little sloppy? With all those cash-poor grade schools, middle schools, and high schools lining up to buy his boxes, maybe he's gotten cocky enough to think he can blithely alienate the colleges and universities. Faithful viewer Jason passed along an official Harvard University letter alerting the faculty and staff that the campus Technology Product Center "will no longer be authorized to offer Dell Computer products to the Harvard Community," as "Dell has elected to discontinue its distribution agreement" with the TPC rather than give "best price assurance" as other vendors have done. No motive for Dell's pullout is given, other than a passing reference to the company's choice of pursuing a "direct sales model"-- though we can't help but recall that Steve's daughter attended Harvard. Coincidence?

However, if Mike's greatly insane obsession with All Things Steve has prompted him to alienate what is probably the most recognized name in higher education in the world, we can't help but feel he may have made a teensy error in judgment. And talk about a golden opportunity for Steve to mount a serious counterattack; in its letter, the Harvard TPC notes that it has "issued an RFI [Request For Information]" and expects "aggressive responses from current partners"-- including Apple. Here's what we think: if Apple is serious about prying Mike off that education throne before he screws up Steve's butt groove, its "aggressive response" should come on like tanks rolling across the border. Whatever your personal opinion of Harvard, it's tough to deny that it would be really nice if Apple could get most of that university solidly and visibly on board with the Mac platform-- and with the distinctly bitter tone just dripping off that faculty letter, we bet Steve could pull it off.

Hey, we're relatively rational people; despite our personal distaste for most things Microsoft, we're willing to accept the harsh reality that without Microsoft Office, the Mac platform would be deader than the Macarena by now. In this dimension, many people have to use Office-- not because of its feature set, mind you, but because everybody else uses it. Sad, but true. So it's a darn good thing that Steve got Bill Gates to guarantee the continuation of Mac versions of Office back in '97, even if he had to agree to be a shill for Internet Explorer at every public appearance to do it.

Ah, but what about Mac OS X? Sure, office:mac 2001 is all well and good in Mac OS 9, but we've heard there are some "issues" when running it in Classic. Even though Microsoft patched some of the more grievous problems, it'd still be nice to have a native Mac OS X version of the software available, given how many people need to use it. Well, most of you already know the "good" news: Office 10 for Mac OS X is under active development and is slated to ship this year. But the slightly-less-good news is that it's going to be late to Mac OS X's coming out party; whereas Apple is expected to ship all Macs with Mac OS X as the default operating system starting at Macworld Expo in July, Office 10 isn't scheduled for release until sometime this fall.

However, according to MacCentral, Microsoft will be attending the party, even if Office 10 itself is a no-show. Reportedly the company has scheduled an hour-long "Microsoft Office 10 for Mac OS X Users Update" at the Expo for Thursday, July 19th; interested Mac users who can drag their partied-out carcasses down there at the terrifying hour of 9 AM will be treated to sixty thrilling minutes of reasons why, when Office 10 finally ships, it will "take Macintosh productivity to the next level." Gee, if there's any time left over at the end of the session, perhaps Microsoft can also tell us about "thinking outside the box," "working smarter, not harder," and how "there's no 'I' in 'Team.'" Who knows? Maybe next year's show will feature a whole "Tired Business Catch Phrases" conference track.

In any case, while we aren't surprised that Microsoft won't be bolstering the acceptance of Mac OS X with its all-important Office suite until probably after Windows XP ships-- oooh, color us shocked-- you can always console yourself with the OS X-native version of Internet Explorer (otherwise known as the "Please Don't Switch To OmniWeb" release). And don't fret; Office for Mac OS X will be here eventually. Wait a minute... are we sure they meant Office for Mac OS X, and not Office as Mac OS X?...

And speaking of Internet Explorer on Mac OS X (yep, masters of the segue, that's us), those of you who adhere to Steve's professed "browser of choice" under Apple's latest operating system should probably be aware that the latest release version, 5.1.1, does some... stuff that affects other browsers. Bad stuff. Potentially sneaky stuff. Stuff that the overly-paranoid might even refer to as "sabotage." (Just kidding. Like there's such a thing as "overly-paranoid"!)

While faithful viewer Daniel M. Dreifus just reminded us of the phenomenon, news of the quirk first surfaced last week; we saw it on MacFixit, though we didn't think much of it at the time, since it didn't directly affect us. Basically, installing IE 5.1.1 causes QuickTime to stop functioning in OmniWeb, iCab, and pretty much every other native Mac OS X web browser. (QuickTime movies play fine in IE, however, as if you couldn't guess.)

We doubt this was an intentional Microsoft "competition" tactic-- partly because we're naïve twits, but mostly because the source of the problem is the new version of the QuickTime plug-in that IE 5.1.1 installs into the Internet Plug-Ins folder. The new version is 5.0B and appears to work only with IE; the older one is version 5.0 and seems to work with all browsers except IE. Reportedly you can even have both installed at the same time (with different filenames, duh) and QuickTime movies will play just fine in all browsers.

Still, it's tough to deny that Microsoft's "accidental" crippling of other browsers looks just a tad suspicious. Maybe it wouldn't seem quite as shifty if the company didn't have a history of this sort of behavior stretching all the way back to the early eighteenth century. In any event, if you use multiple Mac OS X web browsers and haven't yet upgraded to IE 5.1.1 but plan to, be warned-- backing up your existing QuickTime plug-in so you can install both the old and new versions as described on MacFixit is highly recommended. And remember, Microsoft isn't out to get you. Really.