Ex-cast member Gil Amelio continues to get press about his recent tell-all memoir, On the Firing Line, My 500 Days at Apple. Although a Nando.net article reveals an Amelio that outwardly claims to be "ecstatic" about Apple's recent financial improvements, we sense an undercurrent of jealousy and injustice, and a man who honestly thinks he laid the groundwork for Apple's turnaround but isn't getting any credit.

To be fair, yes, it certainly sounds like Amelio did a lot of work during his year and a half that led to many of Apple's current strategies. After all, he did buy NeXT, which provides the central technology for Rhapsody and even future incarnations of the Mac OS. He also got us all used to the idea of cutting popular and cool but unprofitable projects (though we're told that exactly which projects got cut were determined by Steve Jobs, in the post-NeXT-buyout era). But we find it a little odd (and, quite frankly, a tad pathetic) that he's claiming credit for the changes that took place after he left; many of them may have been his ideas, but it was Steve Jobs who was crazy enough to pull them off. The simple fact is that most of the changes that have turned Apple around occurred because Amelio was ousted, not in spite of that fact.

In addition, there's the obligatory comments about how Steve Jobs is an "erratic egomaniac seeking revenge." It's good to see that some things never change.

We feel slightly less upset about Intuit's recent decision to cease development for Quicken for Macintosh. It sounds as if they will reconsider their strategy when (if?) Apple starts targeting the consumer market again, but until then, it doesn't make financial sense for Intuit to release a new version of Mac Quicken every year. MacCentral's exclusive interview with Intuit spokesperson Adam Samuels somewhat smoothed over the rough edges of our righteous indignation.

Here's Intuit's excuse: sales of Mac Quicken have fallen for three straight years, but the number of Mac users with internet access has increased in the same time. Therefore, rather than waste resources developing yet another yearly upgrade, they've decided to sink more resources into improving their web-based extension to Quicken; Mac users who have Quicken and an internet connection will be able to use the frequently-updated functionality at quicken.com to do things like apply for mortgages and buy insurance. Intuit will continue to sell and support Quicken 98 "for as long as customers demand it."

No, we don't buy this whole excuse-- we're not that gullible. (In fact, it reminds us a lot of when Power Computing announced that it was going to start selling Windows computers "in order to grow the Mac OS installed base." Puh-leeze.) Intuit is obviously more concerned with their own profitability than with keeping the Mac platform viable-- as well they should be. But Quicken 98 will still be sold, and its feature set will be updated and expanded via quicken.com. And we think Intuit's statements at least reveal that they're not anti-Mac, which, these days, almost qualifies them for sainthood.

Being primarily Mac users, we at AtAT don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about what's going to happen in the year 2000; after all, the Mac's designers were perfectly aware that computers would still be around in the 21st century. (That doesn't mean we aren't going to suffer the effects of our banks, governments, etc. using PC's, but hey, at least we can keep our own records straight.) Anyway, given that Microsoft is just now posting extensive year-2000-compliance info on their website (and in fact they admit that Windows NT 4.0 isn't fully compliant, though NT 5.0 will be, when released), we were wondering why Apple hasn't cashed in on the end-of-the-century hysteria and publicly touted this particular benefit of using Macs.

Since Apple/Chiat-Day haven't leapt on this issue yet, we thought we'd offer a free commercial idea. What about something like this: Pull back from a closeup of a wall calendar showing the current date as being the first Monday in January, 2000. Reveal the interior of a standard business office setting, with the sounds of chaos ensuing. Pan from one desk to the next, showing various Y2K problems in succession; the woman at the first desk is on the phone to accounts payable, unable to get a check cut for an important deal, the man at the second is trying to calm a customer on the phone, explaining that he's unable to retrieve the necessary order information, etc. The sounds of consternation remain, but the picture fades to white, with the following successive captions in Apple Garamond: "Q: How can you be sure a computer is ready for the year 2000?" "A: Look for this symbol:" (Fade to Apple logo.) Voiceover: "Macintosh. Ready for 2000 since 1984." Fade to caption: "Think Millennium." Fade to black.

Eh, what do you expect for free? ;-) (More on the Y2K Microsoft conspiracy in a future episode.)