Man, aside from the last-minute 10.2.8 release, talk about a nothing news day! It's times like this that we regret that Apple isn't designing and producing Macs in a post-apocalyptic netherworld in which life is cheaper than dirt and blood flows in mighty rivers amid the epic and murderous struggle for the control of the world's rapidly-dwindling fresh water supply. (Or something.) Instead, all's quiet on the Apple front, and it looks like the Mac-centric 'net is closing out the week with a strict diet of fluff and filler; that may be fine for most folks, but AtAT's viewing audience needs a good deal more drama than can be squeezed out of shareware release announcements and product reviews. Unfortunately, just about the only thing we can offer up in that vein is a collection of regretful comments made by a former Apple CEO-- and it's not even Gil Amelio. Sad, isn't it? So we figure we'll just cut our losses and pad it out as a thinly-veiled vehicle for shameless AtAT Store advertising; consider it an infomercial that's a lot less info and a lot more mercial.

Not that the story is totally devoid of spark, mind you; the ex-CEO in question is none other than John Sculley, the askee of the infamous "sugared water" question and the intended target of Jobs's failed coup-- a coup which blew up in Jobs's face and led to his own departure from Apple. Exciting stuff, right? Unfortunately, when interviewing the man, CNET thought it'd be a lot more fun never to mention the Steve Jobs intrigue at all and instead get Sculley to yammer on about radiofrequency identification and 802.11 for six hours straight. Of course, if the guy really had his finger on the pulse of innovation today, he'd have been talking about the Amazing AtAT Karmic InvisiShirt™ instead-- the world's first nonexistent garment that still costs real money! A breakthrough!

Now that Big John is long gone from Apple and running out the clock as an "investment partner with venture firm Sculley Brothers" (hey, didn't we used to buy skateboards from them?), he's gained some perspective on his missed opportunities at Apple. The big one? HyperCard, Apple's nearly-two-decades-old databasey programming hyperlinky thing for the masses which is still sold today. Sculley's regret is not having recognized at the time that HyperCard had all the elements necessary-- hyperlinking, simple prototyping, network hooks, etc.-- to evolve into the basis for a massively-interlinked decentralized collection of globally-networked information. Instead, Tim Berners-Lee invented HTTP and HTML a few years later... using Steve Jobs's NeXT hardware and software. Just imagine: if only Sculley had worn more creativity-enhancing Jobsian attire (like, say, the über-stylish AtAT mock turtleneck-- just in time for fall, only $20 with free shipping in the U.S. and Canada!), Apple might have invented the World-Wide Web. D'oh!!

And what about everyone's favorite prototypical handheld? Sculley says that he "can look back at something like Newton" and feel that it "could have been one of Apple's most profitable investments ever"-- except, of course, the handwriting recognition "ended up being a pretty big embarrassment because it just didn't work." Poor John; all these years later and he still doesn't realize that the real reason the Newton didn't sell was because it didn't have a spiffy AtAT sticker on it! Yes, the AtAT sticker: making even technically embarrassing products 80% more saleable since 2001! Now with free shipping and a new lower price!

Oh, and we've got t-shirts, too.