There's little use denying it: despite its disturbingly DOS-formatted name, advertising firm TBWA\Chiat\Day has cranked out some pretty amazing ads for Apple over the years. There was, of course, the groundbreaking "1984" commercial, which introduced the world to the Macintosh (at least by name and mood; the most relevant bit of hardware present in those 60 seconds-- before Apple added the iPod, of course-- is the sledgehammer) and which routinely gets ranked as one of the very bestest ads ever made by anyone for anything ever. More recently, the "Think different" campaign of the late '90s won an armload of awards, despite violent protest riots by militant literalist grammarians and the fact that it didn't advertise a product or service and its inaugural minute-long TV spot never once mentions the name of the company it's for. (There's a logo, though. Just don't blink at the end.)

We don't disagree that these are some seriously excellent ads, but they're undeniably touchy-feely pieces selling a mood and a brand, not a specific product on said product's merits. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it does make it tough to quantify the ads' effectiveness; all we can say for sure is that the Mac is still alive and kicking twenty years later, and Apple didn't crash and burn in post-Amelio 1998-- so, presumably, missions accomplished?

Regardless, now TBWA\Chiat\Day has just won an award (and a sizable pile of cash) for a series of Apple print ads whose efficacy can be measured reasonably well. Faithful viewer frozen tundra led us to an Adweek article which reports that the Magazine Publishers of America have bestowed the $100,000 Grand Prize Kelly Award on the makers of the "Apple iPod 'Silhouette' campaign that shows people dancing with iPods against brightly colored backgrounds." Score! Suppose the Silhouettes get any of that hundred grand? They should, considering how many iPods they've managed to sell.

While the Silhouette ads at least do sell a specific product and even show it in use, they still manage to refrain from listing technical specs and features-- so why are they so darn effective? Well, according to one of the judges, they show that "you don't have to spend a lot of time talking about features to get people to make a human connection with your product. Also, one of the core values for Apple is design. To reinforce that without ever talking about it, just by art direction, is an incredibly smart and effective device." Wow. See, we would have attributed the campaign's effectiveness to the pretty colors, the visual equation "PERSON + iPOD = SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THANG," and the fact that most people don't like to read. Oh, and the catchy slogan that appeared on a few of the posters, "iPOD'S UNREPLACEABLE BATTERY LASTS ONLY 18 MONTHS." Maybe that's why we're not in the ad business.

Anyway, even if we don't know why the ads work, they clearly do work, because iPods are the market leader by a wide margin. So hearty congratulations to TBWA\Chiat\Day for another job well done and for winning a pile of cash and all that; mostly, though, we're happy for the Silhouette people. We hear that this honor has already done wonders for their careers and the offers are just pouring in. Two of them have signed to shoot a pilot for a doomed remake of "The Odd Couple" for ABC, one's just been cast as Tybalt in a high-profile production of Romeo and Juliet in Chicago, and three of them have been offered small roles as ninjas in Spider-Man 3. And, of course, we can't forget this fall's Broadway all-Silhouette revival of "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk." Why, those crazy kids just might make it after all!

Wow, sometimes you just have to wonder how some people get to be CEOs. In particular, we're wondering about John McFarlane, the bigwig at a small company called Sonos Inc., who did something that sounds to us, at least, like the corporate strategy equivalent of setting fire to one's own limbs and then jumping into a running tree shredder: it's hard to imagine coming through it unscathed, and if you do get out of it alive, you wind up wondering what you could possibly have expected to gain from such a move in the first place.

First, a little background: you are, of course, familiar with AirPort Express, the $129 mobile wireless access point that can interface directly with iTunes 4.6 and stream its music straight to any stereo or set of speakers plugged into it, a feature that Apple has dubbed AirTunes. You're probably also aware that the biggest logistical hurdle with AirTunes right now is that people still need to walk over to their computers to change what music they're playing in iTunes. Well, it was on the same day as the AirTunes announcement that faithful viewer Michael forwarded us a link to the Sonos Digital Music System, which was also introduced on Monday and which also streams digital music wirelessly from a personal computer to one or more receivers connected to speakers throughout the house-- except that it comes with the one thing that AirTunes probably needs more than anything else: a remote control.

And here's where we wander into "What Was He Thinking?" territory: faithful viewer Ryan McLean tipped us off to a Wall Street Journal article which reports that Sonos chief McFarlane just happened to be at D: All Things Digital this week, where Steve Jobs was making his annual appearance. McFarlane apparently decided that it'd be a really great idea to demo his own company's home wireless music streaming system to Steve-- within days, if not mere hours, of Steve having announced Apple's own competing product.

(Before we go any further, just so you don't get all stressed out about Sonos being a potential "AirTunes killer" product, the receiver costs $499 and the remote costs $399. 'Nuff said.)

Now, granted, we're speaking with benefit of hindsight, here, but we just can't imagine what McFarlane hoped to accomplish from such a move-- and the end result was nothing if not entirely predictable: reportedly after handling the Sonos remote control, Steve "said he believed the product might violate Apple patents related to the design of the iPod" and shuffled off to "figure out if he can sue." Ouch. But seriously, even if Sonos hadn't introduced an arguably sexier competing product (that's not just any remote control; it has a full-color screen, shows album art and upcoming songs, etc.) on the same day that Apple had launched AirPort Express, Steve would probably be phoning the lawyers. C'mon, look at this thing-- we'd swear that scroll wheel was Photoshopped into place right from a bona fide iPod photo.

Which isn't to say that even if there weren't a potential patent infringement suit in the cards, McFarlane hadn't still made a bafflingly poor move walking up to Steve and saying "hey look, we just released something that makes AirPort Express look like a Blue Light Special." Heck, if Steve couldn't find grounds upon which to sue, he'd probably have had a couple of goons kneecap McFarlane in the parking lot. But you live and learn, we suppose. Assuming you live.

Speaking of people getting all up in Steve Jobs's face and stuff, we're starting to wonder if maybe his Reality Distortion Field might need some sort of recharge, because the man appears to be having a little bit of trouble bending mere mortals to his will lately. Case in point: faithful viewer Riverwalker tipped us off to a quick blurb over at CNET which reports that Uncle Steve has been trying to get permission to knock down his own house for a couple of years now, to no avail. It just goes to show you that money and power can only take you so far. Forget the RDF for a second, since it doesn't seem to be working anyway, and let's pretend that Steve is just like any other run-of-the-mill, utterly ordinary billionaire who is CEO of two hugely influential high-tech companies. You'd think a guy who'd made it that far up the ladder of life's successes should be able to lob a few sticks of dynamite into a house on his own property, right? But noooooooooo.

So here's the deal: Steve has owned a 17,000-square-foot house in Woodside kindasorta near the Apple campus for the past twenty years, he's now decided that it's "a dump," and he wants to knock it down or blow it up or reduce it to its component subatomic particles or something. Unfortunately for him, local planning officials have decided that the house is a historical monument of sorts. Apparently it was designed by George Washington Smith (who, we're guessing, would never have been nearly so famous if he hadn't stuck that "Washington" in the middle there all the time) and happens to be "an authentic example of the Mission Revival style of architecture," which is historically important to the area. The upshot is that the locals are looking to block the demolition and even force Steve to shell out several million smackers to restore the place.

See, this is where it gets interesting, because while Steve now describes the mansion as "a dump," apparently he actually lived there for a while, so it couldn't have been too bad all that long ago. Then-President Clinton had stayed on the grounds occasionally while Chelsea was attending Stanford, but that may not mean much, since he stayed in the guest house and stuck the Secret Service in the alleged "dump"-- and we assume those guys are trained to withstand harsh living conditions. The really juicy stuff in this tussle takes the form of veiled accusations that Steve let the house fall apart on purpose so that he'd have an excuse to torch it; faithful viewer David Triska notes that The Almanac quotes the History Committee's report as saying that "the present condition of the house is a result of willful neglect," and that Steve had actually removed doors and windows from the place in order to "expose the house to the elements." Oooh, intrigue!

The planning commission's going to meet on Wednesday and is expected to vote to block demolition, which will prove that Steve can't always get what he wants. Now that we think about it, actually, we're starting to suspect that town planning commissions are somehow RDF-immune. Remember all that goofiness over signage that Apple had to deal with when it was trying to open its retail store in Germantown, Tennessee? That dragged on forever, too. So if you were wondering who's going to lead the resistance movement when Steve attempts world domination in 2007 to enslave the human race and sell us all as livestock to the Lizard Warriors of Arcturus 4, now you know. Buddy up to your local planning council today.