Wait, yesterday was the what bowl? Oh, that's the thing with all the commercials, right? Yeah... well, whoever scheduled it against a night of Sunday night Fox reruns seriously misforecast our viewing habits, but hey, there's always the distant possibility that we weren't the target audience anyway. As far as the AtAT staff is concerned, the Super Bowl is most noteworthy for being the setting for Apple's revolutionary "1984" commercial that launched the Macintosh into its long, strange trip. And since Apple didn't buy ad time during the game this year, we saw no reason to miss our evening of televisual entertainment starring bored genies, level 5 vegans, and high-powered slingshots that inflict violence upon unsuspecting victims.

However, we admit that we're a little disappointed with the outcome of the competition itself. To find out that our pick lost by such a razor-thin margin, well, it stings a little, we admit. No, we're not talking about the bit with the pigskin and the big helmeted guys and the hut-hut-hike thing; we hear that was a good old-fashioned butt-whompin'. We're talking about the important contest, which was USA Today's top ten list of all-time favorite Super Bowl commercials. Of course we were pulling for "1984," and for a couple of days last week, we even encouraged AtAT viewers to vote for the ad. Unfortunately, we got cocky; we should have campaigned harder. As faithful viewer Grant pointed out, the "unthinkable" happened: when the dust cleared, "1984" was not number one. Our beloved hammer-tossing, state-smashing track star had been knocked into the runner-up position by Mean Joe Greene and his stinky ol' jersey.

Worse yet, "1984" only lost by a measly 309 votes, out of 72,894 cast. That's less than a half of a percentage point. It's bad enough that we lost, but now we also have to contend with unavoidable flashbacks involving chads and court rulings and dumb protest slogans as well. Ugh... Pass us the ibuprofen. Well, if we needed any more proof that every vote counts, we just got it in spades. And at least the Mac platform scored a victory in that other little game last night; as pointed out by faithful viewer Michael Grey, the Baltimore Sun reports that the Ravens prepared for what turned out to be their victorious clash with the New York Giants by analyzing and reviewing digital footage of previous games-- on the team's Macs. So you can credit the platform for contributing to the Ravens' 34-7 savage pummelling last night. That's something, right?

Everybody knows that when it comes to copying Steve Jobs and Apple, Mike Dell is the undisputed king. However, his Steve emulation appears to be primarily pathological in nature; clearly the man is obsessed, can't control his actions, and is a danger to himself and others. (How else can you explain his duplication of even Apple's missteps, like the earnings warnings and the flaming laptops?) Bill Gates, on the other hand, isn't insane; he's just shameless. Microsoft copies Apple's ideas when Bill sees something worth ripping off. Think of it as a compliment-- a big, brazen, hi-I'm-stealing-your-ideas hug.

Recent chapters in the ages-old saga of Microsoft "borrowing" from Apple include the new "brushed metal" look of Windows Media Player (QuickTime Player, anyone?) and the advent of Windows Movie Maker. Those "advances" were announced over a year ago, though, which means that Billy-boy's due for another sweeping misappropriation of an Apple strategy. And wouldn't you know it? Right on schedule (the man is nothing if not prompt!), according to CNNfn, the inimitable Mr. Gates got up in front of a crowd at the World Economic Forum and announced to the assembled masses that "the personal computer is not dead."

Gee, where have we heard that before? Oh, that's right-- a little thing we like to call the last Stevenote, at which Apple's iCEO said the same thing just three weeks ago. Okay, okay, technically Gates has been arguing that the PC remains a viable device for far longer than three weeks, now, but still, the timing is suspicious, right? And even if you don't accept the whole "PCs aren't dead" thing as a Steve rip-off, consider what Bill said next: "Gates explained his vision of the PC at the core of a network of these [wireless] devices." He then underscored "the PC's ability to link handheld computers, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets."

So let us get this straight: Bill's "vision" is that a personal computer should act as... well, perhaps we should call it a "digital hub." Why, that's brilliant! Now why didn't anyone else ever think of that before? It's so nice to see that Microsoft is branching out; instead of just stealing Apple's products, Bill is now stealing Steve's speeches, too.

Just because Bill Gates is busy mining Steve's keynote addresses for material for his own little speeches, don't worry-- his minions are working overtime to swipe ideas at the product level, too. Everyone who registers more EEG activity than a turnip knows that Windows was a baldfaced theft of the original Macintosh interface-- and according to an article in Windows 2000 Magazine forwarded to us by faithful viewer David Triska, history is about to repeat itself, big-time.

The article itself focuses primarily on Microsoft's struggle to build support for its .NET strategy (which we've taken to calling "Microsoft Java") into the Windows operating system. But the really interesting part to the drama fiends out there is the off-the-cuff mention of how Microsoft's programmers are "having 'panic attacks' about Mac OS X's new Aqua UI." Apparently the simplicity of the new Finder, in particular, has the best and brightest of Redmond reaching for a clean change of britches. A "source close to Microsoft" reports that Microsoft's user interface folks are "suddenly playing catch-up-with-the-Mac again," and you know what that means: expect Windows 2002 to contain as much of Aqua's lickability as Microsoft's UI team can successfully steal.

Indeed, faithful viewer Mike recently ranted to us about the Aquafication present in beta versions of Whistler, Microsoft's next operating system. We went scrounging around the 'net and found a SlashDot article that points to several screenshots, and while we notice a certain candy-style quality to the look and feel (not to mention a healthy helping of soft drop shadows and translucency effects), we have to admit that the "homage" is less blatant than we expected. Then again, the most recent of those screenshots were posted back in October, so perhaps Microsoft's look-and-feel team have managed to craft a more faithful representation by now. But hey, even if they're not quite there yet, they've still got plenty of time-- and fear is a great motivator...