Okay, by now everybody's heard about the price drops on the Power Mac G3 line, which some Mac sites have been talking about for weeks. Unquestionably, this is a great time to buy a new box-- assuming, of course, that you're willing to forego the coolness factor of the iMac in favor of the expandibility of Apple's more pedestrian offerings. What's particularly interesting to us is seeing just how much each option at the Apple Store has dropped in price-- which is easy, thanks to MacAddict's handy price comparison.

MacAddict's chart reveals just how far Apple Store prices have dropped since March. On top of the $300 reduction on the baseline desktop and $400 off on the baseline minitower, you can save a whopping $460 on the option to upgrade to a 300 MHz processor. Pretty much all other options have also dropped significantly, including RAM, disks, and high-speed networking. These Power Mac price drops are of particular interest to budget-conscious graphics professionals, who need more than an iMac to get their work done, and the perennial oxymoron known as the "serious gamer," who's willing to spend more cash to enhance the immersive game-playing experience.

Remember, no matter how hard Apple pushes the iMac as a great games machine, if the games you're interested in playing are primarily of the 3D variety (which is quite likely, given that genre's overwhelming popularity), you're probably going to want to play them with a 3D accelerator card, which makes hardware-accelerated games look nicer and play faster-- and which you can't use in an iMac. Consider a Power Mac G3/233 desktop machine instead; for $100 more than an iMac, you get a system that includes a standard set of Mac expansion ports (serial, SCSI, ADB) and a floppy drive, plus PCI expansion slots that will let you add in a cheap VooDoo 3D accelerator to enhance games like Myth, Quake, Unreal, and a slew of others. Don't worry about missing the boat on USB, either-- there have already been PCI cards announced that bring USB to Power Mac G3's for about $70. Sure, you still have to shell out for a monitor, but that's the price you pay for expandibility. For Mac gamers, it's hard to beat the $1399 Power Mac G3/233 right now.

Remember when the Newton was officially bumped off Apple's product list? Apple promised that it would get back into the handheld computer market in 1999 with something completely different. A lot of us said "yeah, right," and recently that attitude seemed somewhat justified: whereas Apple had once promised a handheld device, they have recently been touting an upcoming "consumer portable" instead, which has sounded much more like a discount PowerBook than anything to compete with the Palm Pilot or Windows CE devices. Let's face it-- at four pounds, the eMate, while using Newton technology, wasn't really a handheld computer. Unless your definition of a handheld computer is "a computer you can hold in your hand." We were thinking of something a little more portable, ourselves.

But then Reality dug up rumors about a fascinating feature in next year's "eBook." Apparently some sources are claiming that the screen portion can rotate back a full 360 degrees away from the keyboard, snapping into what would be the bottom of a standard PowerBook, yielding what is essentially a closed laptop that is "inside-out." In this "tablet mode," the screen is on the top of the unit, and the deactivated keyboard is on the bottom. Voilà! A large, color, handwriting-recognizing tablet that works with a stylus instead of the keyboard. Think "color MessagePad that runs the MacOS-- and is about four or five times the size."

We at AtAT are trying really hard to get too excited about this possible feature. After all, at this stage, it's just a rumor. But if it turns out to be true, the eBook could well become a must-have item. Sure, it's yet another step away from the "smaller is better" mindset of handheld computing, and our ideal handheld is still a MessagePad 2100 but with the size and synchronization features of the Palm Pilot. But a translucent hybrid laptop/tablet with instant power-on that weighs under four pounds would be enough to convince us to carry one everywhere we go.

"Redmond Justice II" drags onward, as Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice edge ever closer to their courtroom showdown on September 8th. The latest development in the ongoing legal drama is the DoJ's request to depose Microsoft Big Guy Bill Gates for two days, instead of the one day that Microsoft intends. Details about the Justice Department's request for extra Gates grilling time are available at InfoWorld Electric. Judging from the feedback we get, a great many of AtAT's viewers would just love to see Bill Gates deposed-- just not in the sense of the word that the DoJ is using. ;-)

Justice has also requested access to Microsoft's source code for certain versions of both Windows 95 and Windows 98, which we highly doubt they'll get to see. Microsoft is screaming bloody murder about that little request, claiming that the source code to their operating systems is their "most valuable intellectual property." And they certainly have a valid point. Of course, it's not like the DoJ would take the source code and use the trade secrets contained within to release their own PC operating system or anything. Or would they?

Coming soon: JustOS 99, the operating system with Janet Reno's personal seal of approval. The best protected memory in the industry-- from the agency who brought you the best-protected witnesses in the world. Now with built-in "VirtualATF®" virus seek-and-destroy module. Just be careful what you do online, because we're watching you. Oooh, the possibilities are endless...