Remember those rumors a couple of months ago that Steve Jobs was so incredibly frustrated with trying to save Apple that he was thinking of quitting? Some rumors went so far as to say that Steve had been clearing out his desk when Larry Ellison persuaded him to stay. Well, according to a recent report on Apple Recon, there's no truth to those rumors. In fact, Steve's entrenched until his ego relents-- and given Steve's ego, that means he's here to stay.

Recon's take on the whole thing is that Steve is determined to go down in history as the guy who "saved Apple." That won't happen if he steps down from the board to let someone else be CEO. Apple must be saved while Steve is clearly in the limelight. So in Steve's mind, as always, things appear to be "my way or the highway." Egotistical? Yup. Selfish? You betcha. Entirely unreasonable? Well...

...To be perfectly fair, we can't begrudge Steve his chance to bring Apple back to greatness. After all, who can resist a storybook ending? To launch a company and a computer that changes the world is one thing, but to be ousted from that company and then return to rescue it is pure fairy-tale. And we sincerely hope that he can make that fairy-tale come true.

MacNN's Reality has some more news on the upcoming "Artemis" Powermacs. Perhaps you recall that Artemis was to be Apple's new low-end, consumer/education model with an all-in-one design similar in concept to the Powermac 5000 series, or its 680x0 precursor the LC 5xx. You may also recall that the unsightly plastic lumps of the prototype units were reportedly so incredibly ugly that they caused immediate involuntary projectile vomiting in approximately 30% of all of those who glimpsed it. And the last we'd heard was that Apple was, wisely, returning to the drawing board.

Reality's latest news is that Artemis may be retooled into a variant of a 6500-type tower case, possibly to be bundled with a separate monitor. Despite killing the all-in-one paradigm, this would be a vast improvement over the original design, which Reality describes as being reminiscent of "one of the pink bug-eyed things you kill in Super Mario Brothers 2--" a description which makes Reality just that much cooler.

Of course, all of this is secondary to the performance of the machine itself, which is apparently excellent. (It should be, given the 233-266 MHz G3 at its core.) But if Apple didn't concern itself with aesthetics and human response, it wouldn't be Apple, now, would it?

It's been a while since Microsoft announced that they were adding a slew of Mac programmers to do things right-- no more half-assed ports like Word 6.0 for the Mac, which may go down in history as the bloated, slow, and buggy software joke of the decade. (Heck, even Microsoft knows that 5.1a is better; you can still buy it from them-- for $30 more than they charge for 6.0.) So far, we Mac folk haven't really seen any benefit from that action.

Until next week. That's when Microsoft unveils Office 98 for the Mac, which, by all accounts, makes the current Mac version of Office look like... well, like a really bad port of mediocre software from an inferior operating system. Don Crabb's review in the Chicago Sun Times (whose dead-tree incarnation we just happen to have in front of us) confirms that the Mac-built suite is no "half-baked Windows port," and that it includes features that the Windows version will lack, like drag-and-drop installation. Though, since the Windows version isn't due out for a few more months at least, I guess that all remains to be seen.

One minor bummer: Mac Office 98 lacks the database program Access, but being diehard Filemaker buffs, we're not too upset. And between Office 98 and Internet Explorer 4.0 (also to be unveiled next week), it appears that Microsoft just might be a real Mac software developer after all. AtAT's PowerTower Pro will remain Microsoft-free, however, at least until the final verdict is in... and probably longer.