The modern legend of "two guys in a garage" is part of the Apple mystique, but while Steve Jobs has returned very forcefully to the Apple spotlight, the "other guy" isn't quite so visibly involved in the Apple soap opera any more. Steve Wozniak, the brain behind the first Apple computer, all but retired from the engineering rat-race, threw a big rock concert, and now seems content in his settled-down role of father and teacher. The Austin American-Statesman has a touching piece about the Woz and his perspective on the whole Cupertino thing.

Just as we're all very familiar with Steve Jobs cast in the role of the temperamental svengali pulling the strings, Wozniak is often painted as the stereotypical gentle nerd-- with no killer business instinct, but a slew of awesome technological ideas swarming around in his head. That naïvete shows through in the Statesman piece, when he waxes sadly about the state of Apple and what it's become. He recalls his early belief that if you had a good product, you could sell it and get rich, but looks around today and sees that's not necessarily the case. He blames the company's refusal to engage in early and open licensing for Apple's backseat status to the Wintel juggernaut: "we were left out and second place when we should have been first."

Wozniak's involvement with Apple these days is limited to a little consulting, for which he earns a modest twelve grand a year; he has very little input into Apple's future direction, and that's just the way he likes things. On the other hand, he feels that Jobs will "get drawn further into the company" as time goes on, which only makes sense. After all, it's Jobs' duty-- and passion-- to get the company back on track and make things Insanely Great again. Or at least sustainably profitable. (And, we hope, continually entertaining.)

Lessee, there's the Sun/Java lawsuit, the antitrust investigation from eleven states, the inquiry by the European Competition Commissioner, the threat of possible antitrust action by the government of Japan, a slew of smaller legal skirmishes, and of course the big brouhaha with the Department of Justice. Just how many lawyers do you suppose Microsoft has, anyway? Possibly not enough, because according to thessaSOURCE, the DoJ's preparing a few more lawsuits to toss on the grill.

They cite a Reuters article and state that the Justice Department is considering filing new charges against the software company for various and sundry alleged anti-competitive practices, such as announcing products so far in advance they don't yet exist and serve only to dissuade people from buying the competition's product. Also considered for litigation are Microsoft's de facto control over "proprietary compatibility standards" by virtue of its OS monopoly, its practice of keeping certain APIs hidden from third-party developers so Microsoft's applications always work better with the Microsoft OSes, and the way it has linked its OSes to Microsoft-owned products and services, e.g. Internet Explorer, MSN, etc. Whew! How many lawyers does the Justice Department have?

All of this, of course, virtually guarantees that "Redmond Justice" will be on the air for years to come. We never thought we'd be thankful for long, drawn-out litigation, but these are strange times, indeed.

Yesterday, it was Sun who was ready to pounce on Netscape's weakening form and swallow it whole. Today, the circle of potential predators has grown-- and rumor has it that Netscape itself is eager to sell. Beyond Sun, Netscape is reportedly talking to Oracle, IBM, and AOL about a full or partial sellout. Inter@ctive Week Online's got coverage based on the Wall Street Journal's story.

If a buyout happens, it won't be for a while, said the WSJ, but that didn't stop Netscape's stock from climbing still higher today, shooting up almost 14% as everyone wants a piece of the takeover action. (Interestingly, Netscape's stock only fell about 13% when the Microsoft-troubled company posted its recent higher-than-expected quarterly loss and layoff plans. Seems like if you ever want to give your company's stock a little kick, all you need to do is start some buyout rumors and stand back.)

Many of AtAT's viewers have voiced concern over the potential consequences to Mac users if Netscape is indeed bought by Sun. Quite a few of you were not thrilled with the prospect, given that Sun's support of the Mac platform has been lackluster, particularly in the area of Java development kits; that attitude could certainly spill over and make Netscape browsers even less Mac-friendly. On the other hand, Sun and Netscape are both deadly enemies of Microsoft, because of Java and Internet Explorer, respectively; if they were more closely aligned via a buyout, there's a chance of some real fur flying if Sunscape decided to release a kickass free browser with excellent Java support. Would there be a Mac version? Well, isn't that always the question?