Say, did you know there really aren't any Beatles songs about torts? (Legal, not Linzer. Well, Linzer either, for that matter.) Not that it's relevant to the matter at hand, since what we're really talking about is a breach of contract case, but we still found it interesting. See how easily we're amused? Call it a gift.

Okay, maybe we should back it up a step or two. Faithful viewer Hickey informed us that, according to FOX News, the Beatles' record label (the oh-so-unfortunately-named Apple Records) is doing what it does best: getting rich by playing the same old songs over and over and over again. The thing is, we're not talking about "Strawberry Fields" or "Drive My Car"; we're talking about "Let's Go Sue That Computer Company and Score Another $35 Million Or So." What, you don't remember that one? It was a smash hit back in the early '80s, charted again later that decade, and now looks to make yet another comeback. Heck, it's got a good beat and you can sue to it-- we give it a 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9...

So yeah, the rumors of inevitability have indeed come to pass: their Apple is once again suing our Apple for using the name of that particular fruit. The first such lawsuit came early in our Apple's career, and the end result was a huge transfer of cash from Cupertino to the UK and an extremely ill-conceived promise that Apple Computer would stick to, well, computers and keep its beak out of the music business. Of course, once our Apple released a computer capable of playing music, Apple Records sued again and won. And that was just over sound files and MIDI, so if anyone at One Infinite Loop is going to act all surprised about this now that Apple's got the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and TV commercials pointing people to AppleMusic.com (now it just redirects to the iTunes page, but we're pretty sure it didn't before), they won't be fooling anybody.

Of course, we do find it noteworthy that when we hit Google for a link to Apple Records (do these guys even have a web site?), what we found instead were links to Screaming Apple Records, Big Apple Records, Bad Apple Records, and Black Apple Records-- and that's just in the first ten results. Gee, do you suppose the Beatles' label has sued any of those guys, or is the mere presence of an adjective before the fruit enough to stave off the lawyers? It must be, because it certainly couldn't have anything to do with the fact that all these labels have considerably less cash sitting around than Steve's company.

Meanwhile, we've refined our earlier plan to counter this recurring lawsuit, so here's Reason #4,338 why you should be glad that we aren't running Apple Computer, Inc.: we have no idea how much Apple Corps. is worth, but we'd be willing to blow our entire $4.5 billion cash reserves (and hock the Gulfstream jet, if necessary) on a buyout of the Beatles' label to end this goofiness once and for all. Upon assuming ownership of the company, we'd enact an elaborate two-point plan:

1. Get downloadable versions of all Beatles recordings exclusively into the iTMS to start recouping some of that cash

2. Rename the label "Litigious Dirtbag Records" and start signing really bad Beatles cover bands just out of spite

Luckily for all of us, we're not running Apple; Steve Jobs is, and Steve's got a much better plan for dealing with this problem once and for all. According to AtAT sources, the wheels are already in motion and an announcement should be forthcoming at this Tuesday's keynote: in order to prevent this kind of costly trademark infringement litigation from ever dogging the company again, Apple Computer, Inc. is officially changing its name. To "Walmart."

Okay, so Apple isn't exactly the darling of education sales that it once was, but it still holds its own; remember how Apple's CFO revealed in his recent Frednote that Apple holds a 16% market share in the nation's schools? That's up a percentage point from last quarter. And if you're just talking about notebooks, Apple's actually in first place with its 30% slice of the pie-- not bad, right? He also mentioned that Apple had been working hard on iBook-for-every-student deals with several schools and districts, and that while few of them would be as big or as attention-grabbing as the Henrico County or State of Maine initiatives, they still represented a hefty chunk of business.

Case in point: the seven schools in Schaumburg, Illinois where all 1700-odd fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders will be getting iBooks as part of a program to improve literacy. According to the Schaumberg Review, three of the schools participated in a six-week pilot program last year, which found that when students had iBooks, "achievement improved" and "students who could barely put together a sentence were writing whole paragraphs by the end of the pilot." Since you can't argue with results, the program has launched with seven schools now, seven more will be joining in January, and the rest of the district's schools will climb on a year from now. This is all good stuff. Kudos to Apple for making kid-friendly products that help make learning fun-- and that schools can use without hiring a 50-person IT department to stay on-call 24-7.

Of course, seeing Apple's improving success in education only prompted the Redmond crew to try to take things one step further. About a week ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled an upcoming "$46 million high school dazzling with the latest technology"-- one that'll be built for the Philadelphia School District by Microsoft. It'll be "embedded with wireless, mobile technology" and stocked to the gills with Tablet PCs and "interactive digital textbooks." Despite one district official calling it a "paperless" school, Microsoft has admitted that "paper will always be needed"-- presumably during those times when the whole school is choking on the next Blaster worm. If it happens in winter, here's hoping they use wooden chairs so they'll have something to burn for heat, too.

Wigged out by the idea of a public school constructed entirely as one big commercial for Microsoft? ("Where do you want to go today?" "Uh, to the bathroom. Can I have a pass?") Oh, don't worry: Microsoft will only be involved "in an advisory capacity. We're still running the school," says the district's chief development officer. Riiiiight. You just keep telling yourself that, pal.

So when will we see this monstrosity? "District and Microsoft officials said they could not anticipate how many computers would be installed or describe what a classroom will look like," and apparently this thing is also "yet unnamed" and its location is "not yet chosen"-- yet it's "set to open in Sept. 2006." Better yet, the school district's CEO said that "he hopes to have it ready a year earlier." So let's get this straight: they don't know what it'll look like, what they'll call it, or where they'll put it, but they hope to have it fully functional in less than two years? Wow-- it is a Microsoft product! Maybe by version 3.0 it'll even stop occasionally eating children. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

It's Friday again here at AtAT (and, uh, probably other places, too), so you know what that means: it's time for another Weekend Brain Teaser! Yes, we know that if it weren't for us, you'd probably spend the weekend using chemical and/or recreational methods to congeal your grey matter into an inert mass of sludge, and since we're firmly committed to the prevention of fun mental atrophy, we've taken it upon ourselves to give you these little cognitive exercises on Fridays to keep your noggins toned and trim until you get back to the office. You'll thank us when you're a humorless retiree full of regret over all those wild weekends of vice and debauchery you missed because you were too busy exercising your frontal lobes with our lovingly supplied mental stumpers. (Well, okay, no you won't-- but we'll pretend you did.)

So without further ado, here's the setup: the folks at MacRumors somehow got their mitts on an internal IBM document describing the relationship between the company's Technology Group and Apple, and how that liaison led to the development of the PowerPC 970 (a.k.a. the G5). There's some good stuff in there, apparently, including the assuring revelation that "IBM has committed to provide several generations of processor development to Apple over the course of five years," but the bit that's relevant to today's exercise actually dishes the dirt on Apple's potential switch to Intel processors. Yes, that again.

According to IBM, Apple had indeed been tossing around the possibility of moving to Macs within which would beat the heart of the mighty Pentium (or whatever), but only as a last resort, Hail Mary-type play, since it was always clear that "using Intel would deeply affect its current customer base"; moving to the x86 platform would force customers to "suffer through a slow transition from PowerPC over the long term." At the heart of that suffering is the cold, hard fact that "every existing Mac program would potentially have to be recompiled to work on an Intel platform," which is something that, amazingly enough, "Apple wanted to avoid." Go figure. Luckily, IBM was up to the challenge, and Apple never had to worry about marketing backwards-incompatible Macs built around chips that Apple itself has repeatedly insisted are slow.

So here's your challenge for the weekend: given this new evidence from Apple's own PowerPC development partner that Apple is well aware that a voluntary switch to Intel is tantamount to platform suicide, construct a scenario of self-delusion and excessive rationalization whereby stalwart devotees of the "Macs on Intel" rumor can keep their faith alive. And no fair simply calling the IBM article (or MacRumors's report on it) a fake-- that's the cheap way out. We expect most plausible scenarios will involve government mind control experiments, an international conspiracy of some sort, a media coverup, several "accidental" deaths, and house pets with radio transmitters implanted in their teeth. (Bonus points if you can work in the phrase "before turning the gun on himself.") Enjoy!