Hee hee hee, now there's the drama we've been aching for! Apparently sensing that we here at the AtAT compound were just about to keel over from terminal boredom, Apple rushed to our rescue by summarily insulting one major metropolitan area, threatening financial harm to both it and another, and potentially deep-sixing a Mac tradition with eighteen years of history to its credit-- all while instigating a schism in the Mac community and looking really, really bad to the press. It's the occasional bonehead move like this one that really make it worth getting up in the morning around here. Maybe we should send Steve a nice fruit basket.

On the off chance you haven't heard, Macworld Expo's move from New York to Boston in the summer of 2004 is now officially official, since the press conference announcing the deal went ahead yesterday as planned. Well, almost as planned. We're pretty sure that no one at IDG World Expo or Boston City Hall planned for Apple to issue a public statement in which, as faithful viewer Eric Wright pointed out, the company essentially told Boston and the Expo planners to go do rude and anatomically impressive things to themselves: if Macworld Expo moves back to Boston, says Apple, we can all cross them off the guest list. And hey, it's always a good time when a struggling corporation that's ostensibly trying to win new customers and retain existing ones goes ahead and tells a fairly populous burgh (with a heavy mix of that education market it's supposedly trying to win back) that it sucks so bad, the company would rather blow off a major marketing opportunity and all the ensuing massive press attention than deign to set one foot within the city limits of such a rotten little cesspool of a town. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, Apple's terse and cryptic statement (as quoted in a CNET article) also states that "since IDG is no longer investing in New York, we now need to re-evaluate our participation in Macworld New York 2003." Because, you see, the best way to help the great city of New York in its time of need is to scuttle one of its largest trade shows by pulling out and ensuring low attendance by vendors and Mac fans alike. Make no mistake, kiddies; since the Boston deal has been in the works for ages, now, this is clearly not an ultimatum intended to keep the show in New York, or at least if it is, it's an extremely ineffectual one. Most of your useful ultimatums are made before a final deal is inked, not during the "Hey look, it's etched in stone" press conference.

Nope, we're going to have to side with the conspiracy buffs on this one (surprise, surprise). IDG claims that it's kept Apple in the loop throughout the long process of hashing out a move back to Boston-- and we see no reason to doubt that, since to have not done so would be the act of a person whose brain had been replaced by a heaping ladleful of steaming boiled cabbage. IDG says that Apple was perfectly fine with the proposed move, and certainly never gave any indication that it might pull out should the show return to Boston. For what it's worth, Think Secret quotes a bunch of unnamed sources who contend that, yes, Apple had formerly endorsed the move, and its sudden bailout came as a complete surprise to IDG. The feeling there is that this is some ill-conceived hardball negotiating tactic that Apple is springing to get concessions like free lattés for the booth staff. But we're starting to think that Apple's likeliest motive for this hoo-haa is probably even scarier than that: times are tight. Even with $4.3 billion in the bank, is this really a good time to be blowing vast amounts of cash on two huge trade shows each year?

See, the thing is, Apple knows full well that an Apple-less Macworld Expo probably won't happen at all. Vendors would pull out, paid attendance would drop through the floor, and IDG would likely have to cancel the whole gig for financial reasons. (On the plus side, if it were to go ahead without Apple in attendance, there's at least a slim chance we'd qualify for press passes again. Ya think?) However, if you're conspiracy-minded enough, you'll probably agree that Apple doesn't care. To Steve, this whole "we hate Boston" thing might be just a convenient way to reduce Apple's convention budget by a wide margin without the press spitting out headlines like "Beleaguered Apple Too Poor To Party" or whatever. The only reason we can imagine that Apple waited to drop its bombshell until after the Expo was irrevocably committed to a three-year stint in Boston is because the company is engineering the end of the summer Expo altogether. (Insert diabolical laugh and evil incidental music here.) If IDG, Boston, New York, a slew of vendors, and countless Mac fans get steamrolled in the process, well, you can't back out of an omelette without pelting your long-suffering supporters with a few thousand eggs.

Then again, there's also always the possibility that Steve's just pissed because he won't be in Manhattan to dine at HanGawi come 2004.

Of course, deep down we all know the real reason why Apple suddenly doesn't want to come to Boston: Steve just doesn't want to be in the same city as us, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff. C'mon, Steve, tell the truth; it was the crack about the socks, wasn't it? Sheesh, it's like you always need to treat the mercurial ones with kid gloves. Okay, Steve, here's the deal; come to Boston in 2004 and we'll apologize onstage during the keynote, after which we'll all head over to Buddha's Delight, our treat. We don't care what planet he's from; no one can stay mad after digging into a Number 13 off the specials card.

In happier (though far less entertaining) news, faithful viewer newwavedave tipped us off to the fact that Apple is seeking to make the lives of this nation's schoolteachers just a little bit brighter. Sure, they may have to try to convince legions of attention-deficient kids that English words traditionally don't have numerals in them, and that algebra is important to learn if they ever want to figure out how much to tip their dealers. Some teachers may need to do it while dodging spitballs, switchblades, and armor-piercing bullets. The ones with quick enough reflexes to make it through Friday then get to figure out how to survive on a weekly paycheck with fewer digits than Bruno the Klutz after his brief stint as a professional carrot-chopper. (Think about that one for a sec-- it's worth it.) But hey, at least now they can all get free copies of Mac OS X 10.2.

That's right, folks; Apple has just launched a "X for Teachers" program, which aims to provide "qualifying" K-12 teachers with free copies of Jaguar. But wait, that's not all! If you order now, Apple will throw in a free "Getting Started with Mac OS X" Training CD chock full of educationy goodness, 90 days of phone support, and a manual-- which, if what came with our own retail copy of 10.2 is any indication, is probably a piece of paper with "THIS IS A MANUAL" printed on it in big block letters, but heck, it's all good. Because it's all FREE. Even shipping, as faithful viewer FrozenTundra noted-- no $19.95 "shipping and handling" charge here.

Of course, that "qualifying" teachers condition may contain a few snags. First of all, this deal is strictly K-12 only, so you college professors, massage therapy instructors, and folks that help people Learn To Drive The Big Rigs are going to have to shell out the dough like the rest of us poor shmucks. Secondly, like so many of Apple's special deals, this offer is U.S.-only, which means that youse foreigners are left out in the cold. (Serves you right for being born elsewhere. What on earth were you thinking?) That restriction actually bothers us quite a bit, because it means that Mr. Archie "Snake" Simpson of Degrassi Community School can't get a free copy of Jaguar. Where's the love, people? The man was a founding member of The Zit Remedy, for Pete's sake... toss the man a bone, already.

Other than that, though, it's pretty straightforward; fill out an application, wait a couple of weeks, and your kit should show up in your school's mailbox. And it's totally cool with Apple if you want to install your free copy of 10.2 on your home Mac instead of at school. So that's the scoop: if you're a K-12 teacher in the U.S.A., Jaguar awaits. And if you already bought a copy for yourself, maybe you can sell your free one and put the proceeds toward a stun gun or something.

It's never nice to kick off a weekend with bad news, but sometimes it's unavoidable: faithful viewer Yoshiki notes an Associated Press article which claims that Steven the Dell Dude is not being canned, as has been widely reported recently-- at least, that's what the dude's agent says. "Dell loves him and he loves Dell," quoth Bonnie Schumofsky, who also claims that "a very high authority" swore to her that Steven's job is secure. Of course, it's not like an agent is necessarily going to be a paragon of unbiased and objective fact, but truth be told, we believe the woman... mostly because deep down we know in our gut that Evil Incarnate can never be destroyed. (What, you're telling us that this silhouette of Steven on Dell's site isn't the spitting image of Satan?)

But really, it's okay, because faithful viewer The Professor tempered things a bit by calling our attention to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald which addresses an official Microsoft response to that whole fake switcher ad hubbub. It seems that Microsoft CEO Steve "I Have A Penchant For Running Around And Hollering Like My Ass Is On Fire" Ballmer publicly announced that his company "may consider sanctions" against Valerie Mallinson, the PR consultant who wrote the piece posing as an anonymous freelance writer who had ditched the Mac because Windows XP was just so gosh-darned wonderful. Actually, what Ballmer said was that "some marketing person did something that was not entirely straightforward" and that "if that's right, [he] will certainly castigate the offender." (And before you write in asking how Ballmer plans to castigate a woman, please... look it up.)

That's not the good bit, though. The good bit, the really excellently nifty bit, is where Stevie B. announces that in order to get the public to take this whole Trustworthy Computing initiative seriously, "it may be necessary to 'weed out' employees who did not live up to Microsoft's code of behavior." Pardon us while we guffaw into our soy milk. Microsoft has a "code of behavior"? Now that's something we'd just love to look over, if only to see how someone formalizes setting the ethics bar two thousand feet below sea level. "Rule 34: No pillaging and burning of villages is to occur during normal office hours." "Rule 76: Human sacrifice and the subsequent eating of the flesh will not be tolerated on company grounds unless the board of directors is invited to participate." Whom, exactly, is Microsoft going to "weed out" for violating this legendary code of behavior, three cannibal serial rapists from marketing and the guy in tech support who's channeling the ghost of Hitler?