Let's get one thing straight right off the bat, here: Ellen Feiss is not an Apple product. If anything, she is most likely the product of Mr. and Mrs. Feiss, though that's just a semi-educated guess. We are, however, reasonably certain that Ellen is an American product, which is perhaps noteworthy because on occasion Japan creates products similar to our American ones that in some way improve upon our domestic version.

One common improvement, for example, involves miniaturization. Since America still has vast, sweeping chunks of open land just waiting to be paved over, miniaturization over here is really more of a novelty than a necessity; people here buy small cell phones because they're cute, but most folks would get along fine with a model several hundred times larger as long as they could strap the thing on top of their SUVs. On the other hand, Japan, we're told, has rather less land available and its residents are stacked three deep, which is why a cell phone that's small enough to carry inside a single nostril (with room to spare for a folding bicycle and a magazine or two) is an indispensable modern accessory.

Where are we going with this, you ask? Well, simply put, it appears that the Japanese have engineered their own Ellen Feiss, complete with a distinctly Japanese improvement. No, we're not talking about a MiniFeiss, as charming as such a creature would undoubtedly be; the Japanese equivalent is named Momoko Kikuchi, and she looks to be roughly Ellen's size-- but judging by her performance in her Japanese Switch ad, she was designed for greater energy efficiency.

Seriously, check it out. We here at AtAT don't know a lick of Japanese, but faithful viewer jetfuel kindly provided us with the following translation:

"The computer I had before was this... black thing. I was writing an email to my friend. I worked REALLY HARD and typed the whole thing up in English and everything. I got alllll the way to the end of it, and then, all of a sudden... it froze. EVERYthing I wrote was... gone. Haaaaaaaa. I CAN'T USE THIS THING!, I thought. But now I use a Mac, and... it... hasn't done that once. Isn't that awesome!? [logo and URL] I'm Kikuchi Momoko, and I'm a... student."

Note the similarities to the well-known Feissian scenario-- they're both students, and they both worked really hard on something they were writing when a Windows crash led to data loss. They also share similar mannerisms, speech patterns, and body language. But watch the two performances back-to-back and you'll find that, in the same thirty seconds, Momoko outputs at least 33% more energy than our own domestic Ellen. Impressive, no?

We're receiving a significant amount of mail these days from viewers who express a preference for Momoko over Ellen, which implies to us that Apple may have a second cult icon on its hands before long. So who's going to put together the first Momoko Kikuchi fan site?

(If you're out there, Ellen, please, don't feel threatened-- your fifteen minutes of fame can certainly run concurrently with Momoko's. Besides, there's at least one solid reason why you'll always occupy a warm spot in our hearts: Momoko may be more energy-efficient, but darnit, she doesn't bleep.)

Curiouser and curiouser. The iPod was a success as soon as it hit store shelves, but since it was a Mac-only product, its audience was understandably limited. So what did Apple do? It shipped an iPod for the Great Unwashed Masses (also known as "Windows users") a couple of months back. Then it announced that it was burying the hatchet with Best Buy (and not into any of the body parts you'd expect) and that chain would soon be selling iPods in each of its more than 500 stores. Now we hear (via faithful viewer Tara Keezer) that pretty soon iPods will be available at Target; so sayeth CNET who reports that several Target stores admit to having iPods in stock already, though no such deal has yet been formally announced. Target has over 1100 stores nationwide.

So here's the bit we don't quite understand: when, exactly, did Apple turn into a company that actually implements strategies to improve visibility of, access to, and sales of its products?

Okay, sure, that sounds like a throwaway smart-ass comment (hey, you're here, aren't you?), but seriously, the Apple of old, the Apple we know and love-- and love to hate loving-- would likely have kept the iPod a Mac-only product, restricted its sale to Apple's own online and retail stores, and maybe required that prospective customers answer a riddle and pass a test of skill before they'd be allowed to fork over their cash. We assume that at least part of the credit goes to Ron Johnson, Apple's Senior Veep of Retail; seeing as the guy previously worked for Target, at the very least we assume the Target deal's got his fingerprints all over it.

When you think about it, this is all really nifty-- the iPod has turned into a gateway product. (Not a Gateway product. Perish the thought.) Here's a nifty little digital device that can get the Apple brand and a sparkling example of the company's design savvy and attention to detail into 1600 stores that couldn't sell an actual Mac if it came with free beer and a Fabergé egg. What they can sell (we hope) is the world's best portable digital audio player, which will be snapped up by Windows users who will fall so totally in love with it that they may just stop into an Apple retail store to see what this "Switch" stuff is all about. So does anyone know if Apple thought to put a "Switch" brochure in the box with every Windows iPod?...

Longtime AtAT fans will recall a time many years ago when we incorporated the courtroom drama of "Redmond Justice" into our show's plot on an almost daily basis, simply because there was so much juice dripping off the Microsoft antitrust case that it was impossible for us to ignore. Well, imagine our shock when we discovered today that our last "Redmond Justice" update took place over six months ago! We suppose that when we were on hiatus we just naturally assumed that the frickin' case would have died already, seeing as it's been stretching on since flagpole sitting was all the rage. But of course it didn't; it just keeps creeping along at its glacial pace and boring the pants off everybody who encounters it. ("Redmond Justice" really jumped the shark during the remedy phase, much to our chagrin. It really should have ended back in June of 2000 with the breakup ruling; even the appeals process was a little thin on plot.)

The latest development, if you can call it that, came to our attention via faithful viewer Eric Elfman, who noted an LA Times article describing the Justice Department's current investigation of "allegations that Microsoft Corp. continues to hide details about its flagship Windows operating system from competitors," which, if true, would be a no-no under the terms of the proposed settlement. Of course, since it's still just a proposed settlement because Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is taking her own sweet time about winding this marathon case to a close, the only real potential ramification might be the Judge refusing to green-light the settlement because Microsoft shows no inclination to comply.

At issue, here, is the settlement's requirement that Microsoft be required to license the Windows source code to third-party developers so they can eke the best performance from their applications and therefore compete fairly against Microsoft's applications. It seems that Sun and Red Hat (among others) are claiming that Microsoft isn't playing well with others. Apparently Microsoft won't share its code unless developers pay in advance before they can evaluate it-- which sort of wrecks the whole point of evaluating it in the first place.

Moreover, Microsoft's nondisclosure agreements are reportedly draconian and overly-restrictive. How so? We don't know. Because as Sun's general counsel explained, "Under the terms of the NDA, I can't talk to you about the terms of the NDA." Rrrrrriiight... This is one of those logical paradox brain teasers, isn't it? Like the kind that makes computers explode on Star Trek?

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Microsoft's allegedly unrepentant behavior might lead to the proposed settlement needing amendments before the judge will approve it. And seeing as the thing was proposed last November, it's pretty clear that any changes to be made could be completed in, oh, say, six to eight months. All told, we're pretty happy that we've got "July 12th, 2009" in the "When Will 'Redmond Justice' End?" pool...