Finally, Microsoft caves on something! You do, of course, recall the company's attempt to settle a raft of twenty-six California antitrust suits by generously offering to extend its monopoly power into the nation's schools at little to no actual cost to itself, right? And how Steve Jobs publicly called them on it? And how, after listening to Steve, the judge finally struck down the proposal as "thinly-funded" and "constituting court-approved predatory pricing"? You don't? Look, we understand you're concerned about the flesh-eating space locusts, but do try to keep up, okay?

Assuming that you're now all caught up, here's the latest in this ongoing saga: Bloomberg News now reports that Microsoft has altered its settlement proposal "to address Apple's concerns." Instead of getting flooded with free copies of Windows and Office, under the new plan schools would receive vouchers that could be exchanged for "any manufacturer's technology product." Sounds good, right? Almost a little too good. (Pause, narrow eyes, rub chin suspiciously.)

Indeed, if you're the type of person who needs to ascribe a slimy and/or evil motive to every little move Microsoft makes (also known as "the type of person with at least three remaining functioning neurons"), you may want to check out what The Mac Observer has to say about the revised settlement terms. It seems there's some sort of clause limiting the use of the vouchers to either Windows and Office, or software "produced by other companies that compete with and/or have substantially similar functionality to" Windows or Office. The catch might be just who gets to decide what "substantially similar functionality" means; if it's Microsoft, we envision voucher redemption requests getting kicked back with reasoning such as "AppleWorks does not provide substantially similar functionality as Office, because it lacks Clippy," or "Mac OS X does not provide substantially similar functionality as Windows, because it utterly fails to suck."

For Microsoft's part, one of the company's lawyers is quoted as saying that "all along it was our intention that this settlement be platform neutral" just before his pants caught on fire and his nose grew six inches longer-- oh, if only he were a real human boy! So far, according to Bloomberg, "it's not clear if Apple approves of the changes." Apple had originally pressured for the settlement to require the payment of cash, which schools could spend on anything they need, whether that's software, textbooks, or that red sawdust stuff the janitors dump on top of puke. We'll see if Steve takes the bait.