Hands up, who remembers Stewart Alsop? Because for a long time he sure didn't remember the Mac. For the uninitiated, here's the skinny: Alsop is a writer for Fortune who used to be a Mac fan, but back in the Dark Days of 1996, he lost the faith; in a very public recantation, he not only dumped his own Macs, but also told his various business partners to do the same-- which they did. Yes, ol' Stewart loudly announced that the future was in Windows, and put his money (and reputation) where his mouth was. For that reason, lots of longtime Mac die-hards see Alsop as the quintessential defector. (For the sake of simplicity, we're going to ignore the whole "sour grapes" factor when Apple passed on the chance to buy Be, a large chunk of which just happened to be owned by Alsop's venture capital company.)

The problem, as many of you might have guessed, was that Windows wasn't the Magical Happy Land that Alsop irrationally seemed to be expecting. We noted back in 1999 that the poor guy had given himself his own tragic flaw: by staking his entire reputation on switching from the Mac to Windows, he had essentially painted himself into a corner. And when Windows didn't work (and judging by his "Windows sucks" hair-pulling rants for Fortune, that was an all-too-frequent scenario), Alsop never admitted that the Mac had been a better option-- or, indeed, that there was such a thing as a Macintosh in the first place. After all, he had bailed on Apple because the Mac platform was a dead end; to remind readers that Macs might be a viable alternative would require admitting that he had been wrong.

And that's how things stood for the past two years; having made a bad decision (for himself and his partners), Alsop felt compelled to grit his teeth and tough it out. But as faithful viewer Mel Krewall points out, there are signs that the man is finally starting to see the light. In his latest Fortune column, Stewart reveals that he's been cozying up to an "old flame": a few weeks ago he bought a new Mac. Yes, Stew was captivated by the svelte lines of the titanium PowerBook G4-- and after just a few weeks of use, he admits that he's "rethinking the Macintosh as a factor in computing." Hmmmm... a few years late, but moving fast?

Alsop's reversal breaks down to one simple point: "Unlike Windows, the Macintosh seems to work." And while he's still bummed by the lack of availability of Mac versions of some of his accustomed software, he seems perfectly willing to deal with a smaller software pool in exchange for a computer that actually works for a change. Oh, and about that whole "hey guys, you should dump the Macs" advice back in '96? "Boy, was I wrong: it is as hard to maintain and integrate Windows computers as it is to integrate multiple kinds of computer systems." In other words, there's no "single-platform advantage"-- at least, not if that single platform is Windows.

Poor, confused Stew; it must be vexing to find out you've been living a lie for the past half a decade. But allow us at least to answer the thorny question that gnaws at his aching soul: "So what should I do? Should I go back to using a Macintosh, which would mean asking the partners to adjust once again, and asking the techies to configure our system again?"

Well, duh.

Here's some good news for you frequent air travelers out there; if you get bored burning CDs, syncing your handheld, transferring your digital photos, watching DVD movies, and editing your video footage on those long flights (and let's be honest; who doesn't?), pretty soon you'll have yet another thing to do in your middle seat. According to a MacCentral article that was forwarded to us by faithful viewer Jef Van der Voort, it won't be long before travelers on selected American, Delta, and United flights will be able to fork over some cash in return for a live Ethernet cable-- one whose pipe extends far beyond the limits of the jet itself. Yes, kiddies, real Internet access is reaching for the skies.

Thanks to Connexion by Boeing, if you happen to be a passenger on one of the 1,500 wired jets planned by the three airlines, you'll be able to wile away the hours by surfing while flying. And we're not talking about that cheesy 9600 bps connection you might be able to get by plugging your modem into the AirFone and paying three bucks a minute; this is broadband, baby, with zippy 5 Mbps download speeds. That's half the transfer rate of wired Ethernet-- though you'll have to share that bandwidth with any other passengers using the service as well. (Meanwhile, uploads are at 1.5 Mbps-- nothing to sneeze at.)

There are a few catches, of course. One is that the service will cost $20 an hour. But considering that dialing in via the AirFone for that long would cost you over nine times as much (for roughly 1/500th the speed), we don't consider that much of a problem. Another is that you'll need an Ethernet port-- oh, wait, all Mac portables have shipped with Ethernet standard for the past three years. Never mind. The last catch is the biggest, though: you'll have to wait until "the second half of 2002" before you can dish out a double-sawbuck in exchange for an hour's time on a high-speed pipe at 35,000 feet. At this point, the airlines' only progress is to have signed "Letters of Intent" to get this plan, um, in the air. Still, we're already looking forward to next year's flight home for Christmas. Unreal Tournament, anyone?

May Steve bless the journalists who actually insist on answers to the questions they ask! One of our biggest pet peeves is when an interviewer poses a question, the interviewee tries to slime his or her way out of answering by saying something that completely and utterly avoids the subject-- and then the interviewer moves on like nothing happened. Where's the tenacity? Where's the dogged perseverance in the search for the truth? It makes us lose our patience.

So while we're not in the habit of lavishing CNET with praise, we find ourselves compelled to do so twice in the space of a single week. Last Friday those folks actually concluded (with a slew of caveats, natch) that Mac OS X is better than Windows 2000-- which had us wondering what the alien clones had done with the real CNET. And now today we grudgingly have to admit the teeniest smidge of admiration for CNET's Charles Cooper, who, as noted by faithful viewer George Chen, interviewed Bill Rodriguez (Dell's general manager of education) and wouldn't let him weasel his way out of the tough questions.

Not that we're any real fans of the article's subject matter or tone, mind you; it's basically about how Dell is allegedly kicking Apple's kiester in the education market right about now. Rodriguez slimes his whole way through the interview (displaying, at least, more diplomatic poise than his boss used to) and finally faces a direct question about Apple's skills or lack thereof: "Do you think Apple's lost its edge?" Check out Bill's reply: "As I talk to customers, I feel pretty good about the value proposition we bring to the table-- custom building, custom loading, free testing, delivering on time a quality product at good prices and giving excellent support on the back end-- coupled with the quality of people we have in the field."

Well, that's very nice, Bill-- except for the fact that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. So many of today's "journalists" would simply have rolled over and moved on, but to his credit, Charles responded with: "Fair points, but again, do you think Apple's lost its edge?" Thusly called on his slime, Bill had no choice but to answer-- by saying "I can't answer that." Oh, well. Those of us hoping for a comment about shutting Apple down and giving the money back to the shareholders must shoulder our disappointment. It just goes to show that you should never send a diplomat to do a Crazy Mike's job.