THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002 -- If Bill Gates rules the computer world, then why is Steve Jobs the cover boy in the latest issue of Time magazine?

Which is another way of asking: if Microsoft is a monopoly that deserves to be punished for its carnivorous business practices, then how is it possible that you can buy a Macintosh — running absolutely zero Microsoft software if that's your preference — and have as good or better a computing experience than you would with any Windows machine?

Unlike Boston Globe technology columnist Hiawatha Bray, I have not yet made it over to my local Apple store to check out the new iMac, unveiled on Monday at the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco. However, I did use my Mac PowerBook to cruise on over to Apple's iMac Web site. I especially enjoyed the virtual-reality tour that lets you spin the computer around on your screen so you can see it from all angles.

And there's no question that it is an aesthetically beautiful machine — a 15-inch flat monitor seemingly suspended in air, mounted on a half-spherical base just large enough to accommodate a drive that lets you read and write CDs and DVDs.

It's been some time since Apple has gotten this much attention. In addition to the Time kiss (which may have been accompanied by some ethically unseemly sucking-up on the business side, according to this account in Salon), today's New York Times includes a largely favorable review by David Pogue in which he calls the new iMac "an exceptional value and offers a surprising amount of horsepower," although he does have some reservations about the design.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on all the hype that had preceded Monday's unveiling, noting that, in recent years, Apple's stock has tended to rise in anticipation of new-product announcements and to fall immediately afterwards.

Surprisingly, Newsweek has so far stayed clear of the iMac, even though its tech columnist, Steven Levy, is the author the excellent (if now dated) fan's-view history of the Macintosh, Insanely Great (1994).

Let's stipulate in advance that the new iMac is wonderful. I'm willing: I've been using Macs exclusively since the late 1980s, and on the few occasions when I've considered making the switch to Windows, I've gone running back in horror to the comfort and safety of Apple. I actually own some shares of Microsoft; I just don't want to use its cruddy products.

So how is it again that Microsoft is an illegal monopoly? Well, a few observations.

First, despite what to me, at least, is the clear superiority of Apple's products, the fact remains that some 95 percent of the computing world belongs to Microsoft. Those of us who insist on staying out of Bill Gates's orbit must go to some lengths.

For instance, my primary working software (word processing, spreadsheet, database, and the like) is AppleWorks, an inexpensive and surprisingly robust alterative to Microsoft Office. But I don't work alone — I have to be able to send files to editors. For that I use a conversion utility called MacLinkPlus, which actually costs more than AppleWorks and, as editors have informed me on more than one occasion, is a less-than-perfect solution.

Second, Jobs may be famous for, among other things, flying a pirate's flag on the Apple campus while the Macintosh was being designed (actually, in those days it was aimed at his internal enemies at Apple, not at Microsoft), but Apple these days is hardly an independent player.

When Apple was flat on its back a few years ago and brought co-founder Jobs in out of exile, one of the first things Jobs did was secure a multimillion-dollar investment from Microsoft — pocket change for Gates, but crucial to Apple's survival. The default browser on Macs today is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which, unfortunately for Microsoft-haters, is clearly superior to Netscape's Navigator. The bestselling business program for Macs is Microsoft Office, which has gotten positive reviews, but whose main attraction is that it works seamlessly with the ubiquitous Windows version. Thus, the Microsoft monopoly to which Apple is supposedly an alternative actually includes Apple.

There are, finally, reservations that even Mac devotees should have about some of Apple's business practices. Last spring Apple unveiled a striking new operating system, OS X (as in "10"). It wasn't long before OS X came installed on all new Macs.

The problem is that the computers aimed at the consumer market — iMacs and iBooks — were built around the aging G3 microprocessor (by way of explanation for the non-Mac-savvy, those would be roughly equivalent to Intel's Pentium II chips). In playing around at an Apple store, I found that OS X was sluggish on G3 machines, and decided not to buy it for my two-year-old PowerBook.

The new iMac, by contrast, has plenty of power, as it is built around the G4 chip (think Pentium III), which Apple was already using in its professional-class Macs. That's fine. But all those who bought an OS X–based iMac or an iBook during the past six to eight months is likely to wonder whether they should have waited — or bought, say, a Dell, running Windows, instead.