Whom to believe? We were ecstatic when we read Mac the Knife's description of the long-rumored upcoming Newton MessagePad 2100; after all, who wouldn't want a splefty little handheld outfitted with the new StrongARM 1100 chip running at 200MHz, and capable of driving a color LCD at 1024x1024? (Heck, that's higher resolution than any of the displays we use on our desktops and Powerbooks.)

Of course, the simple fact that a 1024x1024 display, even at 100dpi, would be over ten inches on a side should give us pause. Unless the MessagePad 2100 is a slate-type device (in which case it wouldn't be a "MessagePad"), we think the Knife and his sources may be smoking something "interesting." Add to this the fact that many Newton web sites in the past week had already posted the rumor that the MP2100 would sport an SA1100 chip--and then retracted it--and you have a singularly untenable piece of Knifespeak.

Meanwhile, MacConnection had posted a supposed description of the MP2100 on their catalog web site, though it's apparently since been removed at Apple's request. This description is the other side of the coin; the only difference in the listed specs between the 2100 and the currently-shipping 2000 is an additional 3MB of DRAM. And while that extra heap would be a godsend, it's not exactly innovation befitting the long-awaited 2100. In fact, rumors were flying a year ago that Apple had developed a 4MB 2000 and was planning to ship it. So is that all this is? If so, we're sadly disappointed.

The lovely and talented Donna Ladd, the freelance journalist who broke the news about Yale and the Intel Grant Scandal of 1997 (we think we'll call it YaleGate), wrote us to let us know that she has posted a long list of colleges and universities that have received money from said Intel grant. The total sum exceeds $90 million. That's a lot of shiny-metallic-boogieing clean-room freaks.

Yours Truly is saddened to see that my alma mater has accepted $5.6 million worth of equipment in the deal. School would have been a lot less fun if I'd been struggling with NT instead of playing around with Unix. Given the grant's request for proposals (which gives preference to proprosals stressing the use of NT), it seems likely that MIT does in fact plan to start migrating away from its Sun and Digital workstations towards Wintel boxes. It's enough to make me hurl, but at least I'm out and can use my computer of choice.

It should be noted that while all of the posted schools are accepting free Wintel boxes to replace Macs and Unix machines, none of them is implicated in situations similar to Yale's. Please keep in mind that the reason Yale is being singled out for investigation is because the head of their ITS department told all of the incoming freshmen to buy PCs instead of Macs earlier this year, apparently in an ethically-bankrupt attempt to win the grant. The only crimes of which these other schools can be accused so far are:

• Disregard for the quality of their students' computing experience; and
• An appalling lack of taste. :-P

Following MacInsider's recent abrupt and mysterious shutdown, Macintouch today posted that the plug got pulled shortly after Apple representatives visited the MacInsider offices. When coupled with Webintosh's suspicion that MacInsider was run by two ex-Apple employees who were laid off in last March's reorganization, we're starting to see some pretty serious clues as to who's behind the recent Ninja Attack Campaign that's shutting down Mac-centric web sites faster than you can say "The Mob Killed My Brother." Suppose Godfather Steve is extending his recent "plug the leaks" attack outside of Cupertino? After all, both Mac OS Rumors and MacInsider tended to print lots of, shall we say, "sensitive internal information..."

MaCNN, however, posted a story that paints a less ominous (and therefore much less entertaining) picture, but we feel compelled to pass it on in the interest of completeness. One of their sources claims that the two people who ran MacInsider were just offered "real" jobs at NBC and Ziff-Davis, so they're blowing their virtual popsicle stand in search of something that more closely resembles a real adult life.

And unless they were quietly snuffed by Godfather Steve's Ninja Mafia Hit Squad, the dubious attraction of a "real adult life" also seems to have claimed the AppleSauce site, which also shut down recently. Macintouch pointed us to the author's personal goodbye note, in which he claims that he no longer has "the free time, nor the inclination, to spend all of [his] free time following Apple." (Rest assured that we at AtAT have no desire to acquire any more maturity than the amount we currently tolerate, so we plan to be broadcasting well into the next millenium.)

Lastly, faithful viewer Hunt Anderson notes the following: "In the conspiracy theory, let's not forget the MacRumorMill (www.macrumormill.com) - the first site to fall. It disappeared right about the time that Reality (www.AmbrosiaSW.com/conspire/reality) became "heavily edited" on what Apple Legal would allow. The MacRumorMill used to post both developer notes and reviews of most Apple developer releases." Dangerous times, indeed.