Well, judging from the deluge of mail flooding our inbox, there are an awful lot of Mac users out there filled with righteous indignation at Adobe's decision to skip next month's Macworld Expo due to "budget constraints"-- mostly because, according to the PC Expo exhibitor list, the company evidently found the cash to sponsor two booths at that decidedly non-Mac-centric trade show taking place right now. To make things look even worse, it just so happens that PC Expo takes place in the same city and the same convention center as Macworld Expo, thus rendering any possible excuses along the lines of "New York's too expensive" or "the Javits Center is haunted by the vengeful ghost of a graphic designer who perished violently in a freak PageMaker accident" utterly without merit. Given the facts, it all came down to a simple choice-- and Adobe apparently chose Wintel over the Mac.

But cool your jets and drop the nooses (at least for now), because you haven't heard the whole story yet. Despite what the PC Expo exhibitor list says, faithful viewer Stewart Prentice tipped us off to a message sent by an actual Adobe employee to the GoLive-Talk mailing list yesterday-- which indicates that, yes, Adobe is skipping Macworld Expo, but it's also skipping PC Expo. We quote: "PC Expo is this week and Adobe will NOT have a booth there. We also do not plan to have a booth at MWNY in July. We will not have a booth at either event for the same reasons, so there's no need to suspect a platform bias. We WILL be at both events with meetings, event sponsorship, and speaking engagements, just not a booth." That statement jibes with Adobe's own Events List, from which both Macworld Expo and PC Expo are conspicuously absent. In hindsight, we probably should have checked that list first; if we purported to be actual journalists, we'd probably be mighty embarrassed right about now. But hey, you can't tell us that a little groundless furor isn't entertaining as all get-out, right?

And perhaps "groundless" isn't the right word, anyway. Indeed, if you're still bent on fuming at Adobe's lack of commitment to the Mac platform, don't let the apparent platform-agnostic nature of the company's show-skipping behavior stop you; there are plenty of other reasons you can use to fuel your rage. If you like, you can always borrow our favorite angry thought-- namely, why is it taking so freakin' long for Adobe to get those Carbonized applications out the door? After all, there's only so much fun you can have with Acrobat Reader before you start craving the use of a slightly more creative app under Mac OS X.

Now, clearly Adobe isn't entirely to blame, what with Apple having taken just a hair short of forever to finalize the Carbon APIs-- but the one fact that keeps sticking in our heads is this: Adobe demonstrated a Carbonized version of Photoshop 5 over three years ago, onstage at WWDC '98. The Adobe rep even commented on how relatively quick and painless it had been to tune Photoshop for Carbon. So why, then, do we have to wait for the release of Photoshop 7 (which, as far as we can tell, hasn't even been announced yet) before we can use Photoshop natively under Mac OS X? That's a puzzle for the ages-- and a reason to gnash your teeth over Adobe's snubbing of the Mac platform, Expo attendance notwithstanding. See? We're always glad to help!

Remember way back when Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed a shiny, happy alliance dedicated to a new RISC-based processor architecture called the PowerPC, which was poised to crush Intel's aging CISC-based x86 architecture like a slow, power-sucking, '70s-era grape? Remember when the first Power Macs shipped, offering a glimpse at the promise of a seriously Intel-thrashing future? Remember back in 1996 when Power Computing shipped a 225 MHz 604e-based Mac clone running at a full 25 MHz higher clock speed than Intel's fastest horse, the top-of-the-line 200 MHz Pentium Pro? Yes, for a brief moment, the PowerPC was actually ahead in the Megahertz Race. Ah, those were the days...

On the flip side, let's take a walk down the less sunny side of Memory Lane; remember that seemingly endless stretch of time when the PowerPC G4 was stuck at 500 MHz while Intel and AMD duked it out at the over-1 GHz level? When Motorola finally emerged from its coma to end the drought last January and Apple shipped Power Macs running at up to 733 MHz, you probably thought that the PowerPC's darkest days were over, right? Well, we hate to step all over your buzz, there, but if Mac OS Rumors is correct, then the PowerPC architecture is sailing into some seriously choppy water-- and it's Mac users who might be getting seasick.

The G4 is one kickin' processor, but it can't sustain the Mac platform forever. While the G4 will eventually bring us to clock speeds as high as 1.3 GHz sometime late next year (with a whole lotta luck), sooner or later it's going to bottom out, and the Mac platform will be looking for the Next Big Thing: the 64-bit PowerPC 7500, otherwise known as the G5. There's a small snag, however; if MOSR is correct, then the G5 has all but fallen off of Motorola's roadmap. Seeing as Apple is pretty much its only customer for chips designed for desktop and laptop computers (as opposed to embedded devices), Motorola's got "very little economic incentive" to sink a ton of R&D into next-generation PowerPCs suitable for Macs-- especially given the company's current financial situation, which is sketchy at best.

If Motorola sticks to its current development timetable, then the G5 would debut about a year from now; given how little attention the chip is getting, though, don't bet the house on it. Indeed, it's news like this that dredges up all those old "Mac OS X on x86" rumors from time to time, and while Apple would be foolish not to be investigating PowerPC exit strategies, we're still skeptical that such a move would be anything other than a last-ditch Plan Z. Don't forget, IBM is still cranking out its own PowerPCs, though it's far more interested in powering servers than desktops. Still, with Mac OS X being UNIX-based at its core, perhaps Apple's hardware direction is more aligned with Big Blue's these days.

Personally, we find ourselves wishing Apple would take a Gordian Knot approach to the problem, which has at its root the fact that Apple has no ultimate control over Motorola's (or IBM's) PowerPC development. Now, let's see; the retail sale of Macs was unacceptable for years, as long as Apple lacked control over the retail experience. After trying all sorts of ways to improve the display and sale of Macs in such horrendous environments as Best Buy and Sears, eventually Apple started opening its own stores-- and by all accounts, the early reports are fantastic. Hmmm, Apple's got $4 billion in the bank, and Motorola's hurting for money... does anyone know offhand how much a chunk of a semiconductor business goes for these days?

Wouldn't you know it? Mere days after we freaked out over the remotest possibility of a second antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, faithful viewer Scott Newell clued us in to the distinct possibility that the current "Redmond Justice" case may come to a crashing conclusion any day now. According to an article over at Wired, it's been almost four whole months since lawyers from Redmond and "the other Washington" stood up in front of the appeals court and argued their respective points. Of course, the real focus of that debacle was not any alleged wrongdoing by Microsoft, but rather what the appeals court saw as the grossly inappropriate behavior of Judge Jackson. Impartial observers generally agreed that things were most definitely going Microsoft's way, but given how long the court has gone without delivering a verdict, nobody's quite sure what to believe anymore.

Most interested parties agree on one thing, though; a decision is likely to materialize any day now, and that's got a lot of people nervous. In addition to the case having sat cold for four months, Judge Edwards (the "normally easygoing" head judge who's Grand Poobah of the We Hate Judge Jackson Society) is resigning in "mid-July," and odds are he's going to want to put his official mark on this case before he jets off to Tahiti for fruity rum drinks served in novelty Tiki mugs; that only leaves a few weeks, tops, before a decision shows up. Reportedly the court typically issues its opinions "every Tuesday and Friday" at about 10 AM, so those mark some tense moments for lawyers on both sides of this enduring conflict.

Of course, when the decision does show up, that's probably not the end of "Redmond Justice"-- not by a long shot. If the idea of a second lawsuit filed by the state attorneys general disturbs you, chew on this possibility: the appeals court could order that the case be sent "back to a judge other than Jackson for more hearings, or"-- ready for this?-- "perhaps even a new trial." Just think, we might get to start the whole process all over again; we're so excited, we just might projectile vomit! If you want to be notified when the court finally delivers its opinion, you can sign up for an email announcement... but if you go that route, we'd keep a bucket handy if we were you.