Ah, what a weekend-- short-lived though it was, who can help but grin at a revival of the ancient "Apple Set-Top Box" rumor? We've been down this road before, of course; rumors of some sort of interactive TV device ran wild way back in the "Columbus" days, flourishing in a fertile base of rampant speculation as Apple intentionally leaked false information in order to keep the top secret iMac under wraps. Then there were those "Weird Mac Things" that surfaced on eBay a couple of years ago, proving that Apple had been working on a new interactive TV system-- one that the company had apparently nixed as something not compelling enough to ship. And, of course, Apple did release a set-top box lo these many years ago-- the PiPPiN-- and it tanked. Hard.

In other words, there's precedent a-plenty, and when you stir that together with Apple's latest "Digital Hub" vision and the release of the decidedly non-Mac consumer appliance iPod, well, it doesn't take much to get people yammering about Apple's new set-top box and how we'll never watch TV the same way again. Cue ZDNet UK, who, as faithful viewer Craig Heydenburg pointed out, ran a fun little COMDEX preview last Friday, which offhandedly mentioned that at the show Apple would be introducing the i2DVD-- a single set-top unit that "combines DVD, MP3, and even interactive television technologies." (Needless to say, Craig wasn't the only one to cram our inbox with that happy little link. Do they make Alka-Seltzer for email programs? Because right now Em@iler can't believe it ate that whole thing.)

Now, if you just breathlessly loaded that ZDNet story only to discover that Apple's name is nowhere in attendance, allow us to explain: ZDNet screwed up. Badly. Evidently the reporter got some specs on a new set-top system called the i2DVD, decided that anything with a name that close to iDVD simply must have come from Apple, and ran with it-- thus launching the Mac-obsessed into a frenzy of unnecessary frothing at the mouth. The article has since been corrected to list the i2DVDBox sans its original inaccurate attribution to Apple. In short: real product, wrong company, naughty ZDNet-- an investigative news source whose motto is evidently "Fact-checker, shmact-checker."

If you don't believe this all happened, you might want to take a tip from faithful viewer The M@d H@tter and pay a visit to Mac OS Rumors, who, at broadcast time, was still serving up a lengthy analysis questioning not whether the product was Apple's at all, but rather whether or not this miraculous piece of Apple technology will surface before its expected ship date of "February or March of next year." Sweet Murgatroyd. Since a simple Google search revealed ZDNet's error with its first returned hit, clearly credibility is going out of style these days, because a lot of people seem to be going to an awful lot of trouble to get rid of it as quickly as humanly possible right now. Lucky us-- we never had any to begin with. Does that mean we're cool now?

Help us out, here, folks-- we're considering optioning the Mike Dell story for a biographical miniseries, since we figure the harrowing tale of the man's increasing obsession with Steve Jobs and Apple and his continuing descent into mimicry and madness ought to pull in some decent ratings... say, a twenty share, at least. Our only problem (aside from a handful of legal, financial, moral, logistical, and philosophical issues) is that we're having a little trouble coming up with a catchy title. So tell us the truth: would you tune in to watch a miniseries event called Psycho See, Psycho Do? Granted, it's no Pirates of Silicon Valley, but hey, they can't all be gems.

We're also running into some minor difficulties completing the script, because frankly, it's a bit of a moving target. Every time we think we've reached the end, ol' Mikey goes and pulls yet another copycat act that just has to be in the miniseries. For instance, as faithful viewer Jethro alerted us, now Mr. Dell is apparently jealous of Apple's new racial discrimination lawsuit; according to an article that appeared just this past Saturday in The Tennessean, Dell has managed to get its own butt sued by an irate employee on the grounds of preferential treatment based on race. Now that's some quick turnaround! See what our scriptwriters are up against?

Of course, as usual, Dell's copycat move is just different enough not to be overly blatant. While Apple is being sued for $40 million by a man who claims he was fired because he happens to be African American, Dell is facing a relatively puny $1.3 million suit by a white man claiming that "he was passed over at least five times for jobs that were filled by lesser-qualified black people." The reverse-discrimination angle is a nice touch, and ought to transfer well to a prime time drama, but if Mike thinks he's fooling anyone by introducing these subtle differences, he's only fooling himself. Still, we have to admit-- his timing is impeccable.

You know, now that we think about it, maybe a miniseries isn't the right format for the Mike Dell story after all. The man's psychosis just keeps getting worse, his little "episodes" are becoming ever more frequent, and we doubt they're going to stop anytime soon. So instead of having a single never-finished script, perhaps we should consider a weekly or even daily structure, something that's a worthy vehicle for all the drama, like a soap oper-- uh, yeah. You know what? Never mind.

In the "Rumor Is Stranger Than Melodrama" department, remember last week when Palm's CEO Carl Yankowski resigned his post so he could spend more time collecting stamps or something, and we jokingly suggested that Steve Jobs take on a third CEO position to work his turnaround magic on the beleaguered PDA company? Well, get this, irony fans: faithful viewer Jeff Richardson informs us that over at Palm Infocenter, there's a rumor floating around that Palm's next CEO won't be the Stevester... but it will be another Apple alumnus. No, not Gil Amelio-- something that funny would have killed us dead with laughter. Instead, ladies and gentlemen, it's Sculley Time!

Now, don't get too excited, here, because it's just a rumor. Still, it's fun to think about the connections. First Steve lures Sculley to Apple from Pepsico by tossing around some vague taunts about selling sugar-water. A few years later, Sculley pulls a power play and gets Steve kicked out of the company he himself cofounded. Sculley rules Apple for several years more, and the Soda King's pet project is a whole new kind of computing device: a personal digital assistant called the Newton. The Newton is a massive flop (or, should we say, a "mussite flag"), and amid a series of other debacles, Sculley resigns. Let's get ready to rumble!

Fast-forward past the Spindler years-- Amelio's in the house, trying to turn things around. He buys Steve's NeXT company and brings Steve back into the fold... and Steve gets him kicked out. And not long after, the Newton, which is finally turning into something really special, gets Steved. Is the man petty enough to have done it out of revenge on Sculley? Heck, don't ask us-- we just work here. But it's true that the Newton never did terribly well; instead, people were buying smaller, cheaper, and lighter devices made by Palm, a company with a fair number of ex-Appleites in the trenches. Hmmm.

So if Sculley winds up taking the helm at Palm, he, like Jobs, will have sort of come full circle, albeit to a lesser degree. In a way, we really hope this comes to pass... after all, if Sculley does get the job at Palm, we'd just love to watch the fireworks as Steve taps into Apple's $4 billion war chest to launch a hostile takeover bid for Palm-- just so he can kick out Sculley in the interests of karma. Man, somebody get George Lucas on the horn, because this is a real epic in the making...