Kudos Check! It's been a while since we've mentioned the last award thrust upon Apple for being the most amazingest company ever or whatever, so we figured this would be a good time to fill you in on the latest: according to MacMinute, Apple has finally been added to the Wired 40, Wired Magazine's "annual ranking of the 40 companies driving the global economy." And far from being just another yawner award, Apple's addition to the list is a bona fide get-down-'n'-jiggy-wit'-it occasion, because not only is this the first time ever that the mag has figured Apple for a player "driving the global economy," but Apple has also debuted at a shockingly high third place. Time for a Happy Dance!

Why such a high ranking? Because Apple "has created the kind of platform-and-content synergy that gadget makers dream of"-- in other words, by selling a ton of iPods and backing them up with the iTunes Music Store. Wired cites Apple's "55% of the music-player market" and gushes almost obscenely over the (admittedly Herculean) accomplishment of having secured the iTMS go-ahead from all five major labels. And despite the fact that the iTMS is still boxed firmly within U.S. borders and iPod sales still aren't exactly raking in billions, apparently that's good enough for Wired to rank Apple as the third most important company when it comes to keeping the world's economy chugging forward. (We'd feel even weirder about the whole thing if the two companies ranked even higher than Apple weren't Google and Amazon.)

While we haven't seen the actual article yet (it doesn't hit the 'net until tomorrow, and we're way too lazy to drag our kiesters to a newsstand), the excerpt quoted by MacMinute reveals a very interesting omission from Wired's praise: the Macintosh. We can't say for sure until tomorrow, but apparently the Power Mac G5 and Mac OS X and all that fun stuff means diddly when it comes to the Wired 40; the list has been ignoring Apple completely since it began ranking companies in 1998 (hello, iMac year?!), and apparently Apple hadn't done a thing for the global economy until it started selling Spice Girls tracks at 99 cents a pop. No wonder we don't understand anything about economics.

So if nothing else, this is just one more thing to make the paranoids' heads implode a little more; Wired never saw Apple as a world player until the company branched out into music and consumer electronics, and suddenly the magazine ranks it as the third most influential player in the world-- due entirely to non-Mac contributions. Better double up on the Thorazine, folks, because this sounds like another sign for the paranoiacs that Apple will ditch the Mac entirely and go full-on iPod. (Just take a deep breath and keep repeating to yourselves, "Tiger at WWDC... Tiger at WWDC...)

Oh, and congrats to Apple on its third place debut in the Wired 40! Just think, guys, if you drop that crazy "Mac" project and get, say, a DVD rental service online by the end of the year, maybe next year you'll find yourselves at Number 1! Dare to dream...

Hey, what are the odds of Apple introducing a new iPod during next month's Worldwide Developers Conference? It'd be a bit off-topic, we know, what with WWDC being much more of a hardcore nerdfest than the general-purpose family fun of the Macworld Expo, but hardcore nerds need music too. Besides, as we've mentioned before, the third-generation iPod is getting so long in the tooth it needs to floss with a pair of Gopher Pick-Up and Reach Tools. That's not to say that Apple might not choose to intro a fourth-gen iPod at one of those "special media events" and keep WWDC limited to geekier stuff like new Power Macs, but one way or another, Apple needs to ship a new iPod soon-- not because sales are flagging, but because we're getting bored. And as you're all fully aware, everything is all about us.

Until the big day arrives, though, we suppose we'll just have to content ourselves with still more speculation on the matter. Luckily, AppleInsider dishes up a little more fodder: a "seemingly reliable yet unconfirmed report" claims that Apple will be using a new chip in the fourth-gen iPod-- one that includes "several ENCODE capabilities." Sadly, the source provides absolutely no details whatsoever, and even admits that he has "no inside knowledge of how Apple plans on using the ENCODE capability," or even if it'll do so; the logic is simply that the capability's in the chip, so "it would be churlish of the company to ignore the feature." Because, you know, Apple's never been churlish or anything.

See, the thing is, just because the iPod will be using a chip with a given feature, that doesn't mean that the iPod will actually use said feature, churlishness notwithstanding. We seem to remember hearing that the iPod's existing chip supports WMA decoding, for example, and yet Apple has reportedly disabled the feature; indeed, if you try to play a WMA on an iPod, it'll fly out of your hands with a scream of rage and go straight for your throat. Don't try this at home without wearing a nice, thick dog collar or something, unless you don't mind Gopher Tool suction cup bruises all over your neck. The point is, even if the rumor that an iPod-destined chip includes encoding capabilities turns out to be true, that's no guarantee that the iPod will bother to use it. Apple's been churlish about this kind of stuff before.

So actually, there isn't a whole lot to chew on, here. AI's report also includes a reminder that PortalPlayer, the company that churns out the chips 'n' salsa for the current iPods, took the wraps off its "Photo Edition" architecture last December, but since we covered that last December (and the early news about Photo Edition never mentioned anything about any encoding), it's not exactly anything that sheds much new light on what sort of features Apple might want to play up in the iPod Mark IV.

Okay, we admit it: we only mentioned this in the first place because 1) this is a really slow news day, and 2) we were pretty psyched about getting to use the word "churlish" a bunch of times. No, really, try it-- it's fun!

Given the fact that nothing at all seems to be happening in the world of Apple right now (what, is everybody too scared of embedded rogue telnet links to make any news these days?), we thought we'd take this opportunity to pop back in on that whole crazy flap involving Steve Jobs's other company, what with that whole Pixar-bailing-on-Disney thing and Steve wanting Michael Eisner out as CEO, disgraced before his peers, and dead in a ditch somewhere, all that stuff. C'mon-- Apple's not going anywhere, and some Hollywood drama might make for a nice change of pace, right?

Of course, there's some irony here, in that the new development in the Disney-Pixar saga is that there are, um, no new developments in the Disney-Pixar saga. But bear with us, because the lack of developments is significant. We promise!

You remember, of course, when Steve summarily ended negotiations between Pixar and Disney, whose contract expires next year? Well, we weren't the only ones who suspected that Steve timed the Pixar split just right so that Eisner would be left holding the bag just prior to Disney's annual shareholders' meeting-- at which a whopping 45% of Disney investors withheld their votes to reelect Eisner, presumably in part because they blamed him for dropping the very lucrative Pixar ball. See, Steve's monumental dislike for Eisner is no secret, and plus the guys trying to get Eisner tossed out have mentioned on numerous occasions that they think Steve's the perfect man for the job. Between better Pixar licensing terms, a potential job offer, and wanting to see Eisner stuffed and mounted in a local museum's Hall of Dumbasses exhibit, we're talking about motive so thick you can eat it with a fork.

Which brings us back to the "significant lack of development" we mentioned earlier: if Steve broke off negotiations so early in hopes of getting Eisner tossed out, it's entirely possible that he always planned to reopen negotiations once Disney was being run by someone less objectionable; after all, the current contract won't end until New Year's of 2007, so there's plenty of time. Now, get this: faithful viewer fabian tipped us off to a New York Times article which mentions that other potential distribution partners have been falling all over themselves to sign a deal with Pixar, but Steve's response has been lukewarm at best. Sony invited him over for a chat two months ago; "he has yet to make the trip." Steve and the head of Warner Bros. regularly swap phone calls, "but little more." MGM requested a meeting and was actually turned down.

Now, we fully admit that we aren't Big Business types, and we know even less about the finer points of contract negotiations strategy than we do about how to pad material on a slow news day (which, as it should be painfully obvious by now, isn't bloody much). But it seems to us that if Steve was serious about signing Pixar with a different distributor, the optimal time to negotiate would have been at the very height of the Finding Nemo hysteria-- and certainly before Shrek 2 stomped all over Nemo's record for biggest opening for an animated feature. So is Steve's bluff showing? Because it's really starting to look to us like he has no intention of leaving Disney at all-- and considering that Eisner still hasn't been fired, this is probably the wrong time to be sending that message.

On the plus side, of course, this ought to foster all sorts of future conflict, which we'll gladly exploit in upcoming episodes-- probably on a day as slow as this one. Geez, people, get up and do something, willya?!