Anyone who knows us at all knows that there are exactly two technological advances without which we'd shrivel and die in a dank corner. The incandescent light bulb? Light is overrated. The microwave oven? Convenient, sure, but even frozen burritos taste hot if you drench 'em in enough Salsa Habañero. The wheel? Heck, we've got legs-- and they mostly work, too. No, the only two inventions we simply couldn't live without are our Macs and our TiVos. Our iPods run a close third, but we could possibly survive without them... if you can call that living. But take away our TiVos for a week so we have to watch TV shows that are actually on at that particular time and we regress to some feral wild-eyed state in which we start threading twigs through our hair. Take away our Macs for that long and we physically devolve into a puddle of primitive protein chains. Remove them both and eventually we perish of sheer technological frustration. (It's not a pretty way to go; let's just say that extensive vomiting is involved and leave it at that).

That's why we're always happy to hear talk of a possible Apple-TiVo merger, which would unite our two most vital technological addictions in strange and wonderful ways. Various pundits have raised the possibility plenty of times in the past, but we've never heard any talk that such a union was actually in the offing-- until yesterday. Faithful viewer Ryan Clark informed us that, according to Reuters, an analyst by the name of Steven Kroll Jr. of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. has been flat-out proclaiming that "Apple is interested in [TiVo's] business and that they are a takeout target." With TiVo's market cap only in the third-of-a-billion-clams range, Apple could easily afford the purchase and still keep over six billion stuffed in the mattress. And it'd be a quick way for the company to take one more step into the living room and extend this whole "digital hub" thing beyond just music. Movies on demand? If Steve Jobs could persuade those Luddite and paranoid record execs to let him sell their songs at 99 cents a pop, who's to say that Mr. Pixar himself couldn't get the movie moguls to climb aboard with a similar scheme?

Of course, we're not exactly letting ourselves get too excited over the prospect. For one thing, TiVo bigwigs have repeatedly said that the company isn't for sale, so Apple would have to get hostile, which wouldn't exactly win the hearts and minds of TiVo's rabidly loyal customer base. For another, not that we're captains of high finance over here, mind you, but we've never heard of this Kroll guy, so he probably doesn't usually follow the Apple stuff, and we can't vouch for his accuracy. And let's not forget Steve Jobs's legendary disdain for TV in the first place. Indeed, an analyst firm we have heard of (and which does follow Apple closely) is saying that the rumor amounts to exactly zilch: "We strongly believe Apple has no interest in buying TiVo," says Smith Barney, and based on Apple's own comments, the firm rates an Apple-TiVo merger as "highly unlikely."

So we're not holding our breath. Sure, our TiVo stock got a nice boost from the takeover rumors (you just gotta love an 18 percent increase in one day), and it's nice to fantasize about a seamless marriage of Apple design and technology with TiVo's frighteningly simple and effective approach to personal video recording, but it's not as easy as slapping some peanut butter on a chocolate bar and calling it two great tastes that taste great together. Still, we can dream, can't we?

Happy birthday, Steve Jobs-- and holy cats, it's the Big Five-Oh! Hitting the half-century mark is clearly cause for joyous celebration, and here's hoping that the birthday boy was able to eke out a few hours away from his various and sundry CEOships to spend with his close friends and family to mark the occasion. We would have baked him a cake (Anya, who calls him "Not Steve from Blue's Clues, Steve from Apple," had voiced interest in baking a "strawberry cake with corn-on-the-cob frosting"), but we know from personal experience that shipping birthday cakes cross-country never really works out quite right. Those darn candles just won't stay lit.

Anyway, Steve's not the only one who should be celebrating his semicentennial; while Apple's success since the Dark Days of the mid-'90s is obviously due to the efforts of thousands of hardworking Apple employees over the past decade, we think it's safe to say that without Steve's return to the fold, Apple wouldn't be enjoying stock splits, domination of the digital music market, and what is arguably the healthiest and most vibrant (if not necessarily the biggest) Macintosh market since the platform's inception over twenty years ago. In fact, if it weren't for Steve, by now Apple would more likely be "resting" its beautiful plumage with its feet nailed to the perch, so if you're in any way glad that Apple's still around, it's only fitting that you celebrate Steve's continued presence in this mortal plane of existence yourself. Bake a cake, or do a little dance, or get hammered and cry into the phone at your ex at 2 AM-- but do something.

In fact, here's an idea: why not blow a little cash on the ultimate doodad to commemorate the happy occasion? Faithful viewer ephraimephraim informs us that PodBrix is back with a new limited-edition, Apple-themed Lego figure-- and this one just happens to be modeled after The Steve Himself. Yes, the site has officially introduced "Minifig - Keynote," a hand-modified Lego figurine retooled to look just like everyone's favorite just-turned-50 CEO, complete with black mock turtleneck, blue jeans, and an iPod in one hand and an iPod shuffle in the other. Only 300 exist, so if you missed out on PodBrix's original iPod silhouette dancer, this is your chance to put to rest the ghost of that failure while also honoring the anniversary of Steve's birth.

Oh, wait-- never mind, because it seems that all 300 Lego-Steves sold out within about 90 minutes as we produced this very scene. Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought that buying a teensy yellow Steve with a fetching Lego-bump on top of his head would be the ideal way to celebrate the man's half-century of distorting reality for fun and profit. Looks like you're going to have to find a different way to honor the occasion. May we recommend the getting-plastered-and-phoning-the-ex thing? It's a time-honored classic.

Man, can you believe it's really been over seven years since Yalegate? That's, like, over half a century to a dog, so if you don't remember, you shouldn't feel bad (provided you have fur, a waggy tail, and an irrepressible urge to chase after sticks thrown by primates). Here's the quick recap: back in June of 1997, the director of Yale's Information Technology Services group, one Daniel Updegrove, sent a letter to the university's class of incoming freshmen strongly urging them to buy Wintel computers instead of Macs, since Yale "couldn't guarantee Mac support past the year 2000." That letter naturally unleashed some serious backlash from Yale's Mac-using community, and the calls for Updegrove's head on a platter grew louder still when it came to light that he'd very quietly applied for a $2.7 million "migration grant" from Intel in the very same month that he'd told the freshmen to buy Wintels instead of Macs. Suspicious, no?

The hubbub eventually died down without Updegrove getting canned or lynched for his apparent ethical shenanigans, although he did finally leave Yale in 2001 for the far more Wintel-friendly climes of the University of Texas at Austin (which is, of course, Dell country through and through). Interestingly, he claims to "participate on higher education advisory committees" for Dell, Microsoft... and Apple. Hmmmm. Well, in any case, it's his anti-Mac stance while at Yale that we're talking about right now; specifically, we're wondering just how much of a lasting effect his FUD-caked little notes to incoming students may have had.

Well, we can't say how far to the Wintel side ol' Dan managed to tip the scales before he left (he did get that Intel grant, incidentally), but seven years after his anti-Mac campaign began, the Yale Daily News is reporting that "Apple has made a much larger comeback in Yale student and faculty computing than its 10 to 12 percent national market share would indicate." "10 to 12 percent" nationwide? Where the heck did that come from? Here's hoping that not all of the article's numbers are overinflated, because it cites Yale ITS registration records as showing that "nearly 20 percent of University students and 33 percent of faculty choose Macs over Windows PCs."

Yowza! One Yale student in every five is a Mac user? One faculty member in every three is, too? Now those are some fractions we can get behind-- none of this "1 in 50" stuff we keep hearing every time the quarterly retail sales figures come out. Indeed, we won't be surprised if those ratios wind up swinging even further to the Mac side with the advent of the Mac mini. We're not sure how Yale's numbers compare to the rest of academia (anecdotal evidence implies that higher ed institutions in general seem to be going quite Mac-happy), but in any case, Dan Updegrove's original attempt to de-Mac-ify Yale seems to have failed pretty miserably in the long run. Not that he much cares, we bet, since his efforts apparently served his purposes just fine while he was there. But hey, it's good news for the rest of us, right?