We hate to say it, but we're experiencing a serious frisson of déjà vu as we hear about Apple's continuing availability problems with the PowerBook G3 Series. While the 233 and 250 MHz models have been trickling into the channel here and there, it's the "config 6" models (292 MHz processor and 14.1" screen) that are still nothing but vapor. As always, O'Grady's PowerPage is on top of the situation-- with an understandable (but uncharacteristic) degree of frustration and ire.

It would appear that recent reports of high-end PowerBook sightings were all false, and if anyone heard from the Apple Store that their "config 6" orders would be shipped this Friday, they heard wrong. In fact, Apple is now sending letters to customers awaiting their systems that the orders aren't expected to ship for the next three weeks. The problem appears to be with the 14.1" screens, as MacNN reports that Apple is considering shipping a 292 MHz model with a 13.3" screen to help fill the gap.

Is anyone else flashing back to the Apple of yesteryear, who frequently announced products months before they could actually ship them? Whatever happened to that new strategy of announcing products when they were already available, as was done with the initial Power Macintosh G3 unveiling last November? When the Apple Studio Display was unveiled a month before it was ready, we got a little nervous. And the 90-day lead time on the iMac announcement, while a good marketing ploy, still made us cringe a little. But it's this "whole ugly mess" with the PowerBooks that really makes us sweat. Hopefully this is not a return to an old and icky trend of an Apple that can't even keep its loyal supporters happy... We've had enough of the whole "return to the painful past" thing with the recent disco resurgence. Eewwww.

So much for our plans to extend our "Redmond Justice" courtroom drama indefinitely into the future... It sounds like Judge Jackson wants to cancel the show after only a few more months. Yesterday he made it clear to both the Justice Department and Microsoft that he will not tolerate this landmark antitrust case stretching out for a decade, as the earlier IBM antitrust case did. Instead, he fully expects the case will last only three months or so; the trial is scheduled to start on September 8th and should conclude before the month's end. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has details.

In order to help ensure that the case doesn't grow out of control, Jackson is limiting each side to only twelve witnesses, whicch sounds to us to be shockingly low. In addition, those witnesses all have to be questioned in writing before the actual trial, so the trial itself will consist primarily of cross-examination. Way to cut down on the potential for high drama! You're killing us, here, Tom! (er, Your Honor.)

Unsurprisingly, both sides proclaimed the deadlines and limits as a victory, since it behooves everyone that the case be settled as quickly as possible. Everyone, that is, except us-- what could have been years' worth of raw material has vanished into the ether. Oh well, guess we'll have to dig up our courtroom drama from some other case. Will our travails never cease?

Just a quickie here, as we wave goodbye to the venerable PICT image format, which is being supplanted as the native Mac OS image file format in Mac OS X. Instead, the native format will be Adobe's PDF, or Portable Document Format. MacWEEK has the story.

We certainly can't say much that's good about the PICT format. Only the Mac ever used it, really. Any PICTs you want to send to a non-Mac user generally need to be converted into a more widely-used format anyway. PDF is an interesting replacement, since Adobe's free Acrobat Reader application allows users of most platforms to view PDF's just fine. More importantly, though, PDF is resolution-independent, making it very well-suited for use in the publishing industry. This may give the Mac an added edge in retaining market share in the publishing industry.

But the really cool thing, of course, is that we look forward to taking screenshots with command-shift-3 and getting a PDF image instead of a PICT. We're not sure why.