Friends, has your Internet experience lost that certain spark? Did you once surf with a spring in your clicking finger and a grin on your face, only to find that you're now surfing sans verve-- even to your once-favorite sites? Are pages that once put a wiggle in your tush now coming across as limp, lifeless, and lacking luster? Sounds like you might be suffering from... BROWSER BURNOUT. And possibly the effects of a subpar shampoo.

We can't help you on the shampoo front (other than to remind you that overconditioning can weigh down your web pages and rob them of body), but if you are indeed full-on jaded with your current web browser, consider Apple the cavalry: faithful viewer Anthony Rudd informed us yesterday afternoon that the company has unleashed the wonder that is Safari 1.2 via Mac OS X's Software Update panel. You can also download it from Apple's web site, provided your case of browser-based ennui isn't too overpowering to let you surf to one last page without sighing yourself into a coma.

Check out all the boredom-busting wonderfulness practically spilling out of Safari 1.2's every pore: it packs "improved compatibility with web sites and web applications" (oooh!), adds "support for personal certificate authentication" (ahhh!), provides "full keyboard access for navigation" (ohhh!), and lets you "resume interrupted downloads" (Poppin' Fresh Dough!). The ability to tab through all links and form elements-- yep, even menus-- alone ought to bust you clean out of your surfin' funk. Oh, and for those of you who miss Internet Explorer's cute little trick of including a real, live progress bar in the icons of currently-downloading files, we're told that Safari 1.2 does that, too. And oh boy, it also works with Java 1.4.2! (Yes, that's new, too. See? There's all kinds of crazy new stuff to play with!)

Of course, none of this does you any good if you aren't using Safari in the first place, but what are the odds? (On the off-chance, though, we should probably mention that the public beta of OmniWeb 5 is out, too, and it looks spiffy with a capital SPIFF.) Oh, and we should probably also mention that Safari 1.2 is strictly a Panther dealie; laggards still running Jaguar need not apply. We expect that this will evoke howls of indignation from a subset of the Mac community who will spout forth wild conspiracy theories that Apple is trying to nudge its customers into upgrading to Panther and that the company is-- brace yourself-- in business to make money. Where do people get this stuff?

So we expect riots in the streets of Cupertino any minute now, probably with a death toll in the thousands, or at the very least an organized protest by Jaguar-using zombies fighting for Safari version parity in Apple's last major "big cat" upgrade; the undead need to keep busy now that they've won their fight for an iBook Repair Extension Program. The struggle by unholy walking corpses for consumer rights never ends-- but for Panther-enabled Safari users, at least, the boredom sure does. "Safari 1.2 has banished those surfin' blahs forever-- now all my sites have a lustrous sheen and are ever-so-bouncy!"

Hey, so you're all probably sick to death and beyond of that old standby plot element of Michael Dell's insane obsession with copying Steve Jobs's every move, right? Well, don't worry, we're not dragging that old chestnut out again. Instead, just for variety's sake, we thought we'd go for something even older and more clichéd-- like, say, the fact that Bill Gates is copying Steve's every move. And before you ask, why, yes-- we do be kickin' it old school.

As you all know, Bill's Stevulation usually stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Dell's because it's generally done on a business level (e.g. that whole little thing about Windows kindasorta trying to be a low-rent version of the Mac GUI) and not a personal one. In other words, it's typically more of a "Microsoft copies Apple" thing than a "Bill copies Steve" deal, although there are notable exceptions, like that time Bill wore a black turtleneck for a keynote address, or when he totally stole the whole digital hub concept for another keynote. This time around, though, the copycat move seems to split the difference: faithful viewer James Topoleski notes that, according to the Mercury News, Microsoft's sequel to the Xbox game console will be dubbed the "Xbox Next" and will pack three G5 processors under the hood.

Now, before we get into the whole thing about how NeXT was Steve's post-Apple company that got bought by Apple, we should probably mention that while everyone and his grandmother is reporting that the Xbox Next will use G5 processors, the Merc doesn't exactly say that. The actual article states that the console will have "three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors" and that "earlier versions of these PowerPC chips are used in Apple Computer's high-end G5 Power Mac machines now." Maybe we're being overly cautious, here, but to us, that just says that the Xbox Next will use some sort of PowerPC (probably a custom-designed specialty chip kind of like the PowerPC variant in Nintendo's GameCube), and not necessarily a G5 like the ones Apple is shipping today. So don't go all nutzoid about how Microsoft is going to ship a triple-processor G5 system at probably a tenth of the current price of Apple's dual-processor Power Macs. (Unless, of course, you really want to.)

Still, the Xbox Next will use some sort of PowerPC, which is enough for make a case for blatant Microsoft copycatism. (And oh, yeah-- don't forget that NeXT was Steve's post-Apple company that got bought by Apple. We promised we'd mention that.) One might take this as a ringing Redmond endorsement of IBM's PowerPC architecture over Intel's so-old-it's-begging-for-death x86 platform. On a related note, James also made an interesting point: since the current Xbox is x86-based, the real reason why Microsoft bought Virtual PC might have been so the PowerPC-based Xbox Next can retain backwards compatibility with existing Xbox games. That's not a given, yet, but it makes sense to us. And while we'd like to think that the Xbox Next being PowerPC-based might make the prospect of an emulator for the Mac a possibility, we haven't exactly been flooded with GameCube emulators, so whatever.

What's more, the Merc also reports that "Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so." And you wondered what all those Microsoft-bound G5s (the ones that got that photographer fired) were for. See? The age-old practice of ripping off Apple's moves is alive and well in Redmond. And that'll just have to hold you until Mike Dell announces the Digital Jukebox mini, available in five colors and totally lacking in shame.

Check it out-- we're not the only ones wearing tin foil conspiracy hats! Remember last week when we reported that Pixar and Disney had called it quits? At the time, we had noted that Steve's timing with his announcement was interesting, to say the least; after ten months of negotiations and with almost another two years left in the current Disney-Pixar contract, Steve decided to tell the world about Disney's imminent Pixarlessness just a few days after former Disney directors Stan Gold and Roy Disney called for shareholders to toss CEO Eisner out on his big, circular ear. Coincidence? Ha! And if you think this is just some crazy paranoid theory, well, you may be right-- but at least we don't have to be crazy and paranoid alone.

See, faithful viewer wavedancer pointed out a San Francisco Chronicle article about the Pixar-Disney split which notes that, immediately after news of the breakup went public, Roy and Stan issued a joint statement using it as further proof that Eisner needs to be canned: "Michael Eisner's inability to manage and nurture crucial creative relationships, like the one Disney had with Pixar, is one of the main reasons we have maintained that we did not believe Disney's earnings were sustainable." And there's merit in that perspective, seeing as Pixar films have brought Disney $2.5 billion in ticket sales over the past nine years, while Disney itself has churned out features like Treasure Planet-- which would have been more appropriately named Set $100 Million on Fire and Throw It Out the Window of a Speeding Bus.

But here's where things get clever: the Chronicle hints that Steve Jobs may have purposely demanded way too much during negotiations, knowing that Eisner's ego would never let him agree. In other words, Steve may have scuttled the deal on purpose expressly to give Stan Gold and Roy Disney more ammunition to get Eisner dethroned. Why? Well, for one thing, it's no secret that Jobs and Eisner basically despise one another, and that might be motive enough; personally, we think there's also just the slightest chance that Steve might be clearing the Disney CEO spot for himself.

Either way, though, it would certainly make sense for Steve to help get Eisner fired for letting Pixar get away-- especially since, as the Chronicle points out, there's plenty of time to renew Pixar's contract with reasonable terms after Stan and Roy establish new post-Eisner leadership. Ron Diamond of Animation World Network puts it like this: "I wouldn't be surprised if Roy is successful. If Eisner goes out and Roy comes in, I think there is an extremely good chance that (Disney) could go back to Pixar and get them back."

Too nuts to be true? Maybe. But don't forget, Steve has experience in engineering the ousting of CEOs, and he has a lot to gain: a renewed contract with Disney without Eisner standing in the way of decent terms; the delirious gratitude of Walt's nephew, and all the future favors that brings; and the shiny satisfaction of watching Michael Eisner skulk off into the shadows. Oooh, we can hardly wait for Disney's shareholder meeting in March...