People, people, people... you really all need to calm down about this whole date conspiracy thing. Over the course of the past two or three weeks, we've received several messages from viewers insisting that the truth about Apple's Next Big Thing™-- if not the What, then at least the When-- was subtly hidden within the recently-reworked version of that oh-so-historical 1984 commercial. No, we're not talking about the iPod that was digitally clipped to the runner's shorts, although we still get three or four messages a day from people who've just noticed. We're talking about the spate of messages (just one or two at first, but a whole hatful in the past day or so) which exhort us to load up the highest-res version of the ad, examine the frames right around the 41-second mark just before the hammer flies, shoo away any pesky black helicopters buzzing around, and look at the date in a Mulder frame of mind.

What we're supposed to see is that Apple has cleverly altered the date on Big Brother-Dude's screen to read "1.26.04," which is, of course, today's date, and presumably indicates that Apple has some super-special 20th-Birthday Mac or something which will be unveiled at some point today. Which isn't all that far-fetched, actually, since Apple's only acknowledgment of the Mac turning 20 seems to consist of Steve's opening comments during his Expo keynote and the posting of the reworked ad itself, and that seems a little light to us for such a momentous occasion (though we've heard third-hand reports that Steve isn't big on birthdays and this is all we're going to get). But as we've acknowledged before, product unveilings on a Saturday aren't good business, so if Apple were planning to introduce something special for the Mac's 20th, it'd probably be best to do it on the Monday after the actual birthday-- i.e. today, 1.26.04.

Now, we're putting this together in the wee hours of the morning, so by the time you actually tune in, it's entirely possible that the entire Mac community will already be abuzz with incredulous squeals about that newly-announced and mind-blowing new G5 iMac with the 22-inch screen, 8x SuperDrive, and a price tag of just $999 for anyone who proves ownership of an existing Mac, released as Apple's big fat Thank You to its customers for twenty years of unwavering platform loyalty through thick and thin. We're not ruling it out as a possibility. (Well, okay, the $999 part we are ruling out as a possibility. This is Apple we're talking about, here.) All we're saying is that, to our currently all-too-Scully eyes, even if Today's the Day, the digitally-altered and reposted 1984 ad doesn't provide a scrap of evidence to indicate that fact.

We're not going to post screen grabs and such, because copyright is such a thorny issue these days. (Well, okay-- the real reason we're not posting 'em is because bandwidth doesn't come cheap, and one of you people returned a PlayStation 2 you bought last quarter from an AtAT-provided Amazon link, so we're out nine bucks in associate's fees. There goes our carefully-planned quarterly budget, right into the toilet...) But here's the thing: if you do, indeed, take a hard look at the close-up of Totalitarian Screen Fella right before Ms. Tank Top heaves a blunt instrument through his face, the date on the screen does sorta look like "1.26.04." That is, until you compare the alleged "0" in "04" with the definite "0" in the time underneath, which should read about "09:13."

See, people are assuming that the date is "1.26.04" and that the "0" is of the "oval with slash through it" variety, but if you look at other numbers in the same display, all the zeros are actually wide and slashless. You can see this best, perhaps, by checking out frames from around 36 seconds in, when the time reads "08:08"; the eights are clearly (well, pretty clearly) distinguishable from the zeros because they're much narrower and are closed across the vertical center. Now look back at the frames from 41-43 seconds; we think you'll agree that you're looking at "1.26.84." (If you're still not convinced, mess with the brightness and contrast and take another look without the Oswald-colored glasses; we bet you'll come around.) While it's true that if Apple wanted to plant today's date in the ad, the easiest way would be to make the critical eight look more like a zero, if that's what the company tried, it did a pretty crappy job. And considering how freakin' amazing the added iPod looks, we just don't think that's a very likely scenario.

So that's our take on it, folks. We weren't able to locate any terrifically high-res versions of the original, unPodded commercial floating around for further study, but we think the one posted here is clear enough to show that the date looks unchanged. (And make sure you watch the "Making Of" video, too-- it's a hoot.) Then again, that just raises another interesting point: why does the 1984 ad say "1.26.84" when the Macintosh was introduced two days earlier, on the 24th? Unless, of course, Apple has planned this all along, and knew way back in 1983 that it would introduce an amazing new product on January 26th a couple of decades later. Grassy knoll! GRASSY KNOLL!!

So what do you think, sports fans: is this an intentional Apple snub on the part of the United Kingdom? Faithful viewer bo was first to inform us that-- and we can hardly believe we're saying this-- the Queen of England plans to bestow an honorary knighthood upon Bill "Just A Fluffy White Cat And A Facial Scar Away From Bond Villain Status" Gates. Yup, that's right: Bill Gates, Knight of the Realm. If it weren't in the Telegraph, we'd never have believed it. We suppose that now his minions really do have to call him "sir." (Okay, no, not really; we bloody colonials aren't allowed to use the "Sir" title, so all he gets is a "KBE" suffix. Just a joke, folks, and an easy one at that, so it's probably one we'll make again.)

According to the Telegraph, Bill will become a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ("Most Excellent Order"? That is from Bill & Ted, right?) for "services to global enterprise"-- and the BBC clarifies that to include his "profound impact on the British economy." Which is something no one can dispute, of course, since Bill's monopoly keeps roughly 95% of the technoliterate world running software riddled with gaping security holes that lead to billions of dollars of lost productivity every time some bored kid scrapes together the next Melissa virus-- so yeah, "profound impact" is indeed one way to say it. Another might be "font of all pestilence and a plague upon us all," but that was probably too long for the papers to quote.

Now, we're not at all sure about this, but we strongly suspect that Steve Jobs was never dubbed Sir Steven (See the "sir" thing again? Told you), honorarily or otherwise-- a situation that was probably bugging him enough already when Spielberg got his knighthood, but has surely become positively hateful now that Gates gets the royal treatment as well. That brings us back to our initial question: do you suppose the Queen is trying to tick him off? Because Apple's history with the UK is pretty spotty, and recently we've had to wonder whether or not the Brits were finally retaliating-- you know, by banning that Power Mac commercial last November, and then disparaging the iPod's battery life in the House of Commons just a week ago. Is Gates's knighthood just another jab back at Jobs? And is this all because the Queen has to wait until April to get her iPod mini?

Only time will tell, we suppose, so we'll be keeping an eye on future Brit-relevant developments as they... um... develop. But we will say this: if the Queen chucks a free suit of armor at Mike Dell for his "contributions to technological innovation," we're going to be pretty darn sure that something's up. Oh, and incidentally, just once we'd like to hear Billy-Boy say, "no, Mr. Bond-- I expect you to die!" It'd really make our week.

Contradiction alert! Contradiction alert! Attention, all purely logical android-type constructs from the Star Trek universe: we recommend that you cease monitoring this program immediately, or else you risk exploding when faced with a recursive paradox. Remember the six weeks you spent in the repair shop when Kirk or whoever said "I'm lying"? Exactly. So do yourself a favor and skip the rest of today's episode, and we promise that tomorrow's show will be 100% free of those pesky logical ambiguities. Deal? Good. Now go oil your neck bolts or something.

As for the rest of you who can handle a bit of contradiction in your lives, check this out, because we thought it was kind of nifty: when speaking to BusinessWeek recently, Fearless Leader Steve had this to say about Wall Street analysts and their unhealthy obsession with market share: "We've got 25 million customers that want the best computers in the world. If our market share grows, we're thrilled. But we've held our own, while our rivals were losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year." In other words, says BusinessWeek, Jobs "wouldn't mind if those analysts would start measuring the Mac by the profits it produces, rather than by its market share." Got that? In the World According to Steve as described to BusinessWeek, profits equals good, market share equals bad. Okay.

Now take a look-see at a Newsweek article we found linked over at MacMinute, which explores the state of the Mac after its first twenty years on the planet. Over there, Steve has this to say about the sins of Apple's past: "Who ended up running the company? Sales guys. At the critical juncture in the late '80s, when they should have gone for market share, they went for profits... They behaved like a monopoly, and it came back to bite them, which always happens." What the huh? Suddenly Jobs says that market share is the thing to go for, and a focus on profits is what brought Apple to the brink of collapse. Market share good and profits bad? Or profits good and market share bad? Cannot compute... Cannot compute... Self-destruct sequence commencing in 5... 4... 3...

Okay, so it's not really a paradox, since Steve's talking about now versus then, and there's just a slight distinction between what makes a good measure of a company's success versus what goals a company should target at specific stages in its development. When you think about it, everything Steve says is completely consistent with his current actions; with the Mac boxed in as a minority platform, Apple focuses on satisfying the relatively small percentage of computer buyers who are willing to pay more for quality of design and attention to detail. That translates into profits, even on a low-market share product line. With the iPod, however, Apple is going all-out to broaden its user base and extend market share, just like Steve says Apple should have done with the Mac when it had the chance, before Windows 95 started to level the playing field.

So no, Steve isn't trying to blow up the heads of any robots; we just saw the surface-level flip-flop in the two articles and thought it was interesting. But we still had to warn those androids, because you just never know how they're going to take things, and we really didn't want to get stuck with any Star Trek universe repair bills. Those guys charge a mint.