New & Noteworthy: Apple trade-up compared; MacCentral columnists gone?; MacFixIt Email List down; more

Apple's trade-up not a great deal We still have not had official word from Apple on the $1599 PowerBook 5300/190 trade-up program we noted yesterday (although a MacCentral article confirms it). However, you may want to pass up this deal even if it is confirmed by Apple. You can buy a PowerBook G3 for $1999 at catalog stores (such as MacMall). As catalog stores do not charge sales tax (which Apple does and which is around $100 in this case), this makes the price difference between a new PowerBook and the trade-up only about $300. This means that Apple is essentially giving you $300 for your old PowerBook. But MacMall also throws in an extra 128MB of RAM and a $50 rebate. Similarly, some readers found locations (such as campus stores) that were selling the PowerBook G3 for $1749 or even less. This makes the trade-up even less attractive. Basically, unless you plan to throw your old PowerBook in the trash (thus getting neither money nor use out of it), the Apple offer is one you should refuse.

MacCentral columnists gone along with MacWEEK According to Mac Publishing, the demise of MacWEEK.com (as we previously reported, it has been consolidated into MacCentral) resulted "in a staff reduction of approximately 8.5 percent, or seven people." We believe this referred to MacWeek staff and columnists. However, now we learn of apparently further staff reductions at MacCentral. Bob LeVitus (who had been doing the Ask Dr. Mac column for MacCentral) writes: "I was 'fired' from MacCentral on Friday. I was told that all of MacCentral's columnists were being fired." Consistent with this, MacCentral's home page no longer has links to any columns. [By the way, Bob is looking for another outlet for Ask Dr. Mac; contact him if you have an offer to make.]

Asynchronous Chip Design Take a look at this New York Times article for a peek into the possible future of processor chip design: chips based on asynchronous logic. (Thanks, Henry Schmitt.)

Napster's not too limiting limitations Napster promised to start limiting access to copyrighted material over the past week-end. However, thus far, the restrictions have not had much effect. See this AP article and this SF Chronicle article for details.

Local news: MacFixIt Email List down? We are happy to report that our recent server upgrade has resulted in dramatic improvements in performance. However, it also appears to have taken down the MacFixIt Headlines Email List. We are working to restore it as soon as possible.