Following your comments regarding the Pismo in the XP commercial, in the UK Microsoft paid for a 16-page guide to Windows XP to be distributed with every copy of the Daily Telegraph last Saturday (the largest circulation broadsheet newspaper in the UK).
Did anyone else catch the new Windows XP commercial on Monday Night Football? I could swear that the ad, which features a person flying through the air to the tune of Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” has a PowerBook G3 placed (not so) prominently in the commercial! Surely MS didn’t spend US$100M to promote Apple, did they?
Apple sent out press announcements last week indicating that they plan to announce a new device on Tuesday 23 October 2001 (Tomorrow) that is “not a Mac.” Go2Mac sources close to the project are mum saying only that “everyone will want one” and “on a scale of 1-10, it is a 12.” Strong words indeed.

Time for a little deductive reasoning. First, if the device is not a Mac, then it seems highly likely that it is a piece of hardware. After all, most people get more excited for new hardware than they do for software. Second, music seems like a logical genre for the device because music is the universal language and has a very broad appeal. Last, a music/audio device could use iTunes and QuickTime technology and would fit perfectly in Steve Jobs’ “Digital Hub” strategy.
You may remember our story from last Wednesday that the new Star Wars Episode I DVD-ROM is not compatible with Apple’s DVD player software on some Macs. The two disc set features DVD extras that are not viewable on some Mac systems, and on others the movie is unviewable altogether.

This is a real sin because Macs are used heavily in the production of the Star Wars prequels (including Episode II which is being shot on location in Australia) and Mac users are some of the series’ biggest fans. Several of you wrote to share your experience with the EPI DVD.
Hot on one of the new PowerBook G4s but afraid of losing your investment in all those cool expansion bay devices? Mac Components Engineered (MCE) has your solution: the FireBay Expansion Bay Docking Station. The US$196 unit allows you to ‘dock’ an expansion bay device then connect it to any FirePort like an external peripheral.

Two FireBay units stacked via the convenient connector on the top and bottom. On top is an Excaret Pro 20 GB HDD module, on the bottom is MCE’s CD-RW/DVD combo drive (Schwing!).
Click for a larger image.
Sources tell Go2Mac that Microsoft’s highly-anticipated mac:Office for Mac OS X went Golden Master (“GM”) yesterday. Looks like the US$499 productivity suite is on track for wide release in November 2001.