In recent months, MacNN Reality has grown to become one of AtAT's favorite Mac websites. However, much of their appeal arose from their posting of "sensitive" news, and we've been growing increasingly concerned recently that Reality could get shut down by, say, Apple's legal department. Reality always walked that danger line, and their information was getting increasingly more illicit. They seemed to be the poster child for the bastardized slogan, "Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good-Looking Cobweb." What a surprise, then, to find that the end came not from lawyers with six-colored tietacks, but instead from a much smaller source-- and not one brandishing legal tactics as weapons.

Reality has shut itself down after an incident stemming from their recent sneak-preview of a future version of Kaleidoscope-- one which was, evidently, unsanctioned by the authors of that popular shareware interface enhancer. After Reality posted three leaked screenshots from a beta version of the new 2.0 version, Kaleidoscope programmers Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose reportedly decided to disband the entire beta testing team and delay the product's completion date. They also emailed MacNN stating that they were severing ties with the news site. And it goes downhill from there: Reality claims that Greg actually hung up on a MacNN/Reality representative who called to apologize. To make matters worse, ex-beta-testers then allegedly ran an organized campaign to slander MacNN/Reality to the sponsors of those sites. It was this action which led Reality to the decision to self-terminate.

The whole sordid affair (at least, the whole affair from Reality's point of view) is told in their farewell message. In the end, the whole mess is so complicated we personally don't think any one party is entirely to blame for the debacle. We'll miss Reality, and we hope the authors decide to relaunch the site soon.

In a quick blast of happy news, O'Grady's PowerPage continues its "Wall Street Week" with a MacBench 4.0 speed comparison of Apple's upcoming top-of-the-line laptop with other high-end Macs. The results will make your knees buckle: a 292 MHz Wall Street broke the four-digit barrier, scoring a 1023. That's faster than Apple's current fastest desktop offering, the Powermac G3 266, which scores a 900. Yup, this Powerbook is the fastest Mac on the planet.

Now, we've heard varying reports as to when Wall Street's actually going to ship, but many sources are saying the fastest model won't surface until April. By the time it reaches buyers, there could conceivably be a new Powermac G3 300 or something like that which will reclaim the speed crown. (Does anybody know for sure what these new Macs are that will be introduced this weekend?) Until then, though, the pre-release Wall Streets are king of the hill.

That's a strange position to be in: laptops are generally assumed to be considerably slower than their desktop counterparts, due to trade-offs in power consumption, heat output, physical size, etc. That makes Wall Street the Bizarro Laptop: "Wall Street is faster than desktop computer! Me so happy! Me cry now!"

If you've been tuning in to AtAT for any length of time now, you're very aware that when it comes to the stock market, we haven't a clue. Business finance just isn't our thing; frankly, the whole subject bores us to tears. About all we know for sure is the oversimplified notion that when a company's stock goes up, that's good, and when it goes down, that's bad. (Also, when Mickey's little hand is on the three and his big hand is on the twelve, it's nappy-noodle time.)

Based on that stunningly complex premise, we are happy to see that Apple's stock price had another good day, as it rose another point or so to close at 23 1/2. But for analysis that's any more in-depth than that, we're going to have to point you to Macintosh Evolution, whose Eric Yang seems to know quite a bit more about this stuff. For instance, today he has a bit on AAPL short interest which is really interesting. Or it would be, if we actually understood what he was saying. Most of it's beyond us, but the basic premise seems to be that the short interest fell over 7 million shares between last month and this month, to the lowest level in over a year. That apparently implies that stockholders that have been betting against Apple are now starting to lose their faith in Apple's imminent doom. Again, a frightful oversimplification, but that's the kind of beast we be.

So, given our preternatural aversion to any real financial analysis, we choose blithely to interpret Eric's data as good news. After all, who couldn't use a little more good news? Exactly.