While some Apple-watchers may have been impressed and gratified to see Steve Jobs' NAB keynote last week, apparently that sentiment was largely absent among NAB executives and members. Faithful viewer Allen Denette was kind enough to tell us to look up last Thursday's issue of "Communications Daily," which was less than kind to Uncle Steve's Travelling Quicktime Show. NAB'ers were evidently not expecting a half-hour commercial for Apple's digital video architecture.

We can't print all of the exact details here, because CD is apparently pretty rabid about going after people who even excerpt their publication. (Not too surprising, given that a one-year subscription is over $3000. Yikes.) But we don't think they could object to us quoting individual words used in their article. For instance, there's "upset." And there's also "surprised." Not to mention "unusual," and "mistake." And just to flirt with danger, we'll even quote one phrase: "won't happen again." Now, it's obvious that the NAB's opinion matters, especially if Apple's really serious about trying to position Quicktime as the tool for the transition to digital video in the industry. But just to put things into perspective, we should mention that NAB'ers were also mortified to see Steve show up in his customary casual attire, instead of a suit and tie. (Gasp! Blue jeans! The horror! The horror!) That should give you an idea of the type of people he was trying to sell to-- which means it's going to be a tough sell, given Apple's "corporate culture."

Indeed, just what are we to make of the fact that the Jobs' keynote itself was webcast using Microsoft's NetShow, instead of Quicktime 3? And no, it's not someone's preference that kept Quicktime 3 out the running, since apparently Quicktime doesn't include any capability for real-time broadcasts yet, which would probably be a feature pretty darn high on the list of "requested features" if Quicktime's ever going to be a standard in the digital broadcasting age. Quicktime's going to have to change quite a lot in order to be suitable for the broadcasters, and to be fair, Jobs admits that-- but it's going to have to be one hell of a product in order to get the NAB to forget about the perceived spectacle of last week's keynote.

Whatever happened to Wall Street? Many of us have been waiting for it for the better part of a year, some even longer. Apparently our sources who told us back in March that we wouldn't see the new Powerbooks until May were quite correct. Reasons given for the delay were varied, but there were two that were the most common. The first was a lack of parts with which to build them. The second was less mundane; some report that Apple's holding off on releasing this killer hardware in order to guarantee increased Q3 revenues, in an attempt to show sustainable and growing profits three quarters in a row. But for whatever reason, we're denied the giddy thrill of using these ultrafast Powerbooks until probably next month.

That doesn't mean, however, that we can't drool over illicit photos of them. You've probably already seen the widely-published photo taken from the front left with the lid open, but beautiful as that image is, it doesn't fully convey the gorgeous lines of the new model. Enter Reality, with a slew of new photos showing virtually every side, angle, and facet of Wall Street in all its glory. The top and bottom shots reveal an impossibly sleek design worthy of some next-millennium spacecraft, while the photo of the ports on the back shows the S-video port clear as day.

We at AtAT have zero doubt that this design will sell. A lot. If the rumors are true that a low-end configuration of this model will start at $1999, we can virtually guarantee that Apple won't be able to build them as fast as they'd sell them. We hope this release delay is in fact Apple ramping up production so they don't get caught with no inventory, as has happened continually in the past.

Your friendly AtAT staff were among the thousands of outraged Apple-watchers who were incredulous to hear that the next-generation Rhapsody OS was being positioned strongly as a server operating system, not as a user OS. Since then, those who were willing to scour the 'net for whatever tiny and disparate scraps of information they could find, were able to assemble those scraps into a scenario that, while unconfirmed, is a very reasonable one as far as Apple's OS strategy is concerned. That's why we're pretty relaxed about the whole thing these days; "Rhapsody" indeed will be a server OS, but the Mac OS will basically be Rhapsody for users starting sometime next year, when the "Sonata" release is shipped.

This week's Rhapsody Roundup does a great job of explaining how the puzzle pieces will probably fit together. Sonata will have Rhapsody's core, with an interface that is Mac OS through and through. It will continue to run virtually all of today's Mac OS applications via the Blue Box (which by then may be completely transparent to the end user), most likely at speeds equal to or faster than they run in Mac OS 8.1 on the same hardware. What this means is that die-hard Mac OS users will gain the modern OS features of Rhapsody, while retaining the interface and services of the Mac OS. Since it's Rhapsody's underpinnings under the hood, however, it'll be a cinch for people to add "power user" features like a UNIX command line to Sonata just by downloading a terminal application.

The official story of Apple's software strategy will arrive at next month's Worldwide Developer Conference from the lips of Steve Jobs himself. Until then, this is all speculation, even though it's heavily-researched and extremely well-thought-out speculation. That being said, we at AtAT are more than pleased with the possibilities.