A scant two days after we mentioned an example of the outrageous cost of Microsoft support, Apple goes and declares they are adopting the same model: free web-based support (woo-hoo), free automated phone support (yippee), free phone support for the first 90 days of ownership (huzzah), and $35 a call for phone support thereafter. See Webintosh for more coverage.

The truly bizarre aspect of this is Steve Jobs' statement that this move will make Apple's number-one rated support "even better" for their customers. Gee, we know that we feel much more secure now that we'll be shelling out the crazy ducats for every call. Although, by Steve's logic, we'd be even better off if we were paying, say, $95 per incident a la Windows NT support. Maybe next year, hmm? We can but hope. (We think Steve's overtaxing the ol' Reality Distortion Field on this one.)

AtAT wonders if its faithful viewers recall the halcyon days when one of the big arguments you could put forth to evangelize the Mac was the free technical support. Ironically, when the cloners were in their heyday, suddenly Apple-branded Macs became the only major Mac OS machines that didn't include free support; Power Computing had it, and Motorola even had that five-year warranty.

On the bright side, at least Mac users don't have as many technical problems...

Many of you have probably received a copy of that chain email letter going around warning people that AOL 4.0 for Windows is a huge security hole. Predictably, AOL claims that the warning is a hoax.

If you were one of the six people on the planet who didn't receive a copy, the letter, ostensibly penned by two former AOL programmers, claimed that there was intentional code in the new software that stores a "cookie" on the user's hard drive. However, this isn't a "cookie" in the normal irritating Netscape sense-- this is a cookie from hell that renders your personal files and finances openly accessible to Steve Case and his cronies. The letter certainly reads like the typical internet hoax, and the rational mind finds it both technically and logistically unlikely that AOL would pull something quite this heinous, so most people are accepting that it's all just another net myth, like the "Good Times" virus.

Of course, we know the real story: BIG FAT CONSPIRACY!! After all, we are talking about the same AOL who quietly doubled their standard monthly rate by default (for "unlimited access" that no one could penetrate the busy signals to use); who planned to quietly reverse their written privacy policy and give members' phone numbers to their telemarketer buddies; and who, despite being the online service with the highest SPAM-to-content email ratio on the planet, even went so far as to consider putting advertisements in the body of every email message sent or received. Heck, if you told us that AOL was going to start requiring members to be fitted with surigically-implanted tracking devices to monitor their offline shopping patterns, we wouldn't even blink.

While we're on the subject of conspiracy theories, we're all a little nervous here at AtAT. After all, a scant two days after Mac OS Rumors dropped the top-secret bomb that Oracle and UMAX were going head-to-head to buy out/merge with Apple, their site is unreachable due to "continuing server troubles."

Yeah, right. And the incompatible version of Java in the latest Internet Explorer isn't an attempt to derail the platform-independent software movement. The obvious truth is that black-clad Apple ninja forces have disabled MacOS Rumors using sundry nefarious methods. Well, we're ready for them... Just let 'em try to stop us. >;-)