Q: So just what the heck is this thing, anyway?

Well, let's see... the marketing fluff says that As the Apple Turns is a "humorous take on the daily news and rumors in the turbulent world of Apple Computer." In reality, it's pretty much just some guy spouting off about whatever's on his mind, assuming it's vaguely Mac-related. He's been doing this since September of 1997, and the kids seem to like it, so he doesn't plan on quitting anytime soon.

AtAT takes the form of a soap opera, because the impetus behind its original creation was all the doom-and-gloom reporting about "beleaguered Apple" in the dark days of 1997. If someone at Apple sneezed, suddenly the press was full of stories about how Apple would be gone within six months. We originally wanted to create a parody of that attitude, and give Mac users something to laugh at in a time when laughter was hard to come by. These days Apple and the Mac platform are much better off, but there's still no end of drama to be enjoyed-- particularly with iCEO Steve at the helm.

So, each weekday, AtAT broadcasts a new episode, chock full of melodramatic goodness and with a full recommended daily allowance of sarcasm, satire, and stuff we just make up. If you're looking for hard news and actual journalism, change the channel. We're just here to have fun.

A question for the ages. Well, AtAT is basically the product of two semi-deranged individuals:

• Jack Miller does all of the design, coding, and writing. Whether it's tweaking some dangerously complex nested table code, obsessing over the logo in Bryce to catch just the right shade of translucent red, or crafting obscenely long sentences with subreferences so dense even light can't escape, he's in there getting his hands dirty. In the "real world" he does pretty much the same kind of stuff he does for AtAT, only he does it for a medical device company-- and it's a lot less interesting. In his so-called "spare" time not spent in front of a Mac, he enjoys reading, watching ridiculous amounts of TV, skateboarding, and listening to music spanning an, ahem, eclectic range of styles.

• Katie Hamill primarily lends moral support, inspiration, a keen editorial eye, an unhesitating capacity to find fault (but in a good way!), and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture. As AtAT's Resident Fact-Checker and Goddess of Minutiae, she's the one who, when asked, "who was that guy in the thing with the monkey?" will instantly reply, "Matt LeBlanc"-- somehow psychically knowing that the monkey movie in question was "Ed" and not, say, "Dunston Checks In." (If the questioner had been thinking about the latter film instead, Katie's response would have been "Jason Alexander in a goofy toupée.") This uncanny skill, while almost wholly useless in the "real world" (where Katie is a big-shot lawyer), is practically invaluable to AtAT's production, as you might well imagine.

We slap this show together in our humble home just outside of Boston, MA, where we wrestle with raising an Attack Toddler named Anya. Beyond that, there isn't much else to know, except that if you want to take us out to dinner some night, be advised that we eat no animal products-- we're both vegan, just like Steve (though that's an utter coincidence, we swear).

A more generic and less personal set of descriptions is available on the far less interesting Staff page.

For its first four years on the air, AtAT was produced primarily on a Power Tower Pro from Power Computing (remember those guys?) with a 250 MHz G3 upgrade installed. As of Christmastime 2001, our main workhorse is now a dual-800 MHz Quicksilver G4 with an Apple Cinema Display (finally). We also use a rev. A Blueberry iBook with an AirPort card installed for wireless production around the AtAT compound and dial-up support while on the road. In 2000 we also added a Pismo PowerBook G3/400 to the line-up, mostly as a Mac OS X test-bed and second AirPort-enabled roving production node (though it's actually served AtAT in a pinch). AtAT's design and upkeep necessitates the use of a wide variety of software, including Photoshop, Expression, Bryce, and BBEdit-- the text editor of kings.

As of version 2.0, AtAT is served by a used Power Mac 7500 purchased off of eBay. Those gracious souls at XLR8 donated a 466 MHz copper-based G3 upgrade out of the kindness of their hearts. "Bunter," as we've dubbed the server, runs Mac OS 9.0.4 and WebSTAR 4.2 with several third-party enhancements added, including NetCloak and Welcome! AtAT's Reruns are stored in and served from a custom FileMaker Pro database.

For a year, Bunter was running in AtAT's compound and serving the show via a notoriously sketchy and slow DSL connection. Since July 10th, 2001, AtAT's server has been sitting on a very happy chunk of bandwidth in MacConnect's colocation facility in sunny Parsippany, New Jersey, and we (and it) couldn't be happier. Incidentally, if you're looking for a colocation provider for your Mac server, drop us a line and we'll hook you up with our guy. He's nice.

What disappoints you most about the video iPod 1.0?
	It doesn't get Cinemax
	It requires far too much physical effort to cram a DVD into the Dock connector
	You can't stick your face in the screen like with the TV in Videodrome
	Showing home movies on the iPod makes it too easy for viewers to escape
	I can fit 140 hours of TV in my pocket, but it sure is a hassle lugging this couch everywhere I go
(63175 votes)