"Updegrove... Updegrove... Now where have we heard that name before?" Okay, true, it's been a few months since this was big news in the Mac world, but Dan Updegrove is the director of Information Technology Services at Yale who sent that infamous letter to the incoming freshpersons, informing them that Yale would not support Macs beyond the year 2000, and that all students should therefore buy Wintel PCs instead. That move kicked up a lot of dust, especially when it came to light that the letter coincided with a multimillion-dollar Intel grant that Updegrove had applied for, and won.

The reason we're rehashing this old plot is because a new twist has been written into the script. The Yale Rumpus has a detailed article on Updegrove, revealing a control-freak personality run amuck. It includes comments from several ex-employees of Updegrove's, both from his current Yale years and from when he was associate vice provost of computing at Penn. The comments are, for the most part, far from complimentary. And while that's lovely soap opera fodder and well worth reading, the really interesting thing is that Updegrove himself confirms that he is "a big Mac user." In addition, ex-colleagues reveal that Updegrove actively defended the Macs at Penn-- back when Apple had the cash to give large grants, too. Sort of makes the timing of that Intel grant seem even more unfortunate, hmmm? Oh, what people will do for free stuff...

Then again, who are we to judge? If Intel handed us $3 million and told us to transform "As the Apple Turns" into "Andy Grove's Daily Affirmation," we'd have to think seriously about our future direction. Actually, no, we wouldn't; you'd be reading Uncle Andy's daily platitudes, and we'd be buying a lot of very nice and very expensive Mac equipment on which to produce them. Sorry, kiddies, but them's the breaks; we'd be very happy living off just the bank interest on $3 mil for the rest of our Mac-using lives. Of course, if Apple made a counter-offer of only, say, $2 million, we'd probably go with Apple. Call us crazy idealistic fools...