Attention, Jobsian conspiracy theorists: we know your cup runneth over today, but be careful how quickly you connect the dots and make your mental connections, because you don't want to fuse a synapse. Most health insurance won't cover that sort of thing.

Try to start slowly by grounding yourselves in the basics. Steve Jobs was linked with then-Disney board member Stan Gold in CEO Michael Eisner's mind, because Eisner allegedly called them both "Shiite Muslims"; Stan Gold quit the board after Eisner chased out Walt's nephew Roy Disney, and Stan and Roy teamed up to try to get Eisner fired. Meanwhile, Steve publicly ended months-long negotiations, making Eisner the Bad Guy™ for losing billions in future Pixar revenue, not long before Stan admitted that Steve might be a perfect match for Eisner's job. Steve kept up the pressure by zinging Eisner repeatedly during Pixar's earnings conference call, and then, seemingly from nowhere, Comcast made Eisner look even worse by publicly announcing a buyout offer that Eisner had privately rejected.

Needless to say, it hasn't been a good few months for poor ol' Mikey. But the original question still before you is this: Has Steve been colluding with Roy-'n'-Stan to get Eisner pitched? And now there's a new question to tangle your brain: Was Comcast in on it, too? Because we've already heard industry folks opine that if Eisner leaves Disney, Pixar might come back, and now faithful viewer Simon Lepik-Wookey tells us that Roy Disney is saying the same thing. A Reuters article quotes Roy at a press conference as saying that "I have reason to believe that if Michael Eisner were gone, you could do a deal with Pixar on acceptable terms. I think (Comcast) or others could probably do that if Michael is gone."

There's no question that the Comcast offer is one more thing making Eisner look bad, and now we've got Roy Disney telling investors that if they approve the Comcast merger and get Eisner canned, all that future Pixar revenue just might come flooding back. How... convenient. Especially since, as faithful viewer Reid Hunnicutt informs us, the New York Post is reporting that Time Warner may be putting together a bid for Disney, too-- possibly at Steve's urging: "Meanwhile, Pixar Animation Studios' Steve Jobs was understood to be in active discussions with parties, including cable operators, about putting together a team to emerge as a potential white knight for the Mouse House." So Steve is running around behind the scenes trying to get megaconglomerates to counterbid for Disney, hmmmm? And who's to say he didn't give Comcast the idea for the takeover bid in the first place?

Oh, heck-- we might as well take this all the way into the realm of the truly paranoid. What if Steve orchestrated the whole falling out between Stan-'n'-Roy and Eisner that started this entire mess, either to secure better terms for the eventual Pixar contract renewal or to clear Eisner's CEO seat for the kiester of Steve himself? After all, it's hard to find a better poster boy for a major anti-Eisner push than the nephew of lovable Walt. Everyone's a puppet in a show of Steve's own making. We can hardly wait to see how it all ends; we figure the official job title of "Emperor of All Media" will figure prominently.

By the way, Disney's still going to buy Apple any day now. Just you wait.

So there you are, sitting around twiddling your thumbs as you wait patiently (or even not-so-patiently) for speed-bumped Power Mac G5s to arrive on the scene. You're definitely in the market for a spiffy new Power Mac, but you figure that it would be folly to blow three grand on a top-of-the-line dual 2.0 GHz G5 now, when in a matter of days or weeks Apple will likely revise the top model to run dual 2.5 GHz processors at the same price. You've weighed the inconvenience of waiting against the benefits of greater performance, you've run some return-on-investment numbers, and your conclusion was that waiting would be the best option. What's one more month of creeping along with that beige G3 when waiting means you're practicing Prudent Financial Planning™?

Well, it's time to throw all that rational planning out the window. Remember when Virginia Tech announced that it would be replacing all 1,100 Power Macs in its Big Mac supercluster with brand spankin' new Xserves? At the time the school said that while they weren't sure what would happen to the retired Power Macs when the Xserves arrived, but it was "working on getting them very good homes." If you had visions of Srinidhi Varadarajan conducting grueling interviews and extensive background checks on prospective adoptive parents, however, you were way off. Apparently Srini's criterion for a "very good home" is one whose inhabitants are willing and able to shell out twenty-eight hundred clams.

See, faithful viewer Richard Tjoa was first to point out that a "limited supply" of Big Mac G5s are now being sold at MacMall, and they're going for just $2,799. When you think about it, that's ridiculously cheap for a system that, by all rights, should be on a velvet pillow in a museum somewhere. Don't forget, these units are historically significant for a couple of different reasons: not only were they the guts of the world's first Mac-based supercomputer and the most powerful academic computing system ever built, but they were also the very first G5s off the factory line. Remember when Apple put everyone else's orders on hold to divert each and every available G5 to Virginia Tech so they could get the system built on time?

That's right, for a mere $2,799 you get a bona fide chunk o' history that you just know was treated with respect-- run in a state-of-the-art cooled facility, rarely touched by human hands after its initial setup, etc. Heck, its SuperDrive was probably only used once or twice to load some software, if at all. Just in case, though, all of the Big Mac systems were "refurbished by Apple" to make absolutely certain that everything's in tip-top shape. And considering that it'll cost you $200 less than a regular new G5, well, frankly, we can't see how you can pass up this deal.

Oh, sure, the Apple Store has been known to carry non-Big Mac refurbished dual 2.0 GHz G5s for $2,399, but they're sold out right now-- and anyway, what kind of philistine wouldn't shell out $400 extra for a unit that was part of a freakin' supercomputer? Don't be that guy. That guy's not cool.

[Addendum: faithful viewer Brian Burrow noticed that the Big Mac G5s come with 1 GB of RAM instead of the base 512 MB, so don't forget to factor that in, too. Such a deal!]

Well, we were hoping that by waiting a couple of days, we could weave a vehement corporate denial into the plot, but, um, no. Apparently Palm (or PalmSource, or PalmOne, or whatever the heck part of the post-split company is working on the software these days) really and truly has officially decided to drop support for the Mac platform; as of Palm OS 6, codenamed "Cobalt," Palms will no longer be able to synchronize with Macs. Gadget freaks and info junkies throughout the Mac community are running around in a blind panic, beating themselves over the head with Tungstens and emitting low moans. (We can only hope that someone's got a camcorder, because that footage is going to be killer at the next holiday party.)

It's true, people; faithful viewer James Hromadka was first to wing us the BrightHand article that broke the news: at the PalmSource conference earlier this week, the company "made it clear that PalmSource isn't developing a Mac version of the Palm Desktop. As the way the PIM apps work has changed significantly, this means Mac users won't be able to HotSync without third-party software." Now, we could rage on and on about how PalmSource is in no position to be shutting subsets of its customer base out in the cold, but frankly, we can't see this move as anything other than raw economics at work; Palm has dropped the ball so badly so many times, it's a wispy shell of its former self. (Just ask our stock portfolio.) The two developers the company could afford to keep on staff have probably never seen a conveyance that wasn't pulled by oxen, let alone a Macintosh. Sad, sure, but what can you do?

Here's the thing, though; Steve Jobs's personal dislike for them aside, there are indeed plenty of us Mac users who rely on our PDAs-- or, in the case of your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff, our Palm-powered Treo smartphones. Sure, when Palm OS 6 devices ship we can theoretically spring for $40 copies of Missing Sync, but obviously that's not an ideal situation, given that Treos are currently Mac-compatible out of the box. Here's hoping that Apple beefs up iSync with self-contained Palm OS support (the current version relies on Palm's HotSync software to work), even if it means Apple licensing or buying Missing Sync from Mark/Space.

Or there's always the other option: Apple could finally break down and get back into the handheld business. Rumors of Apple PDAs were rampant a few years back, but of course the buzz died out a bit with Apple's repeated assurances that it had nothing in the works. But now faithful viewer Richard Wolfert notes that MacNETv2 is trying to revive the topic by claiming that Apple will "introduce a new product that will do for the handheld market what the iPod has done for MP3 players" by "July 2004"-- maybe earlier, now that Palm has announced the end of its Mac development. Phrases like "OS X-like," "QuickTime-driven," and "hard drive-based" ought to quicken the pulses of any readers who are Mac-dependent, PDA-dependent, and supremely credulous.

Personally, we just aren't buying it-- yet-- in part because of MacNET's insistence that the device will support Windows via a ported version of iSync. (Apple has gone on the record to state that it doesn't plan to port any other iApps to the Dark Side, but then again, it's not like they had to sign a statement in blood or anything.) There's also the fact that Apple likes selling iPods, which has primitive PDA functions built in; are people who need full-fledged PDAs supposed to carry iPods and iPads, or will Apple incorporate music functions into its PDA and sell it as the iPod Pro? And where does this fit in with smartphones? Too many questions, not enough facts. It's fun to dream, though.

So, right now we're filing the MacNET report in the drawer with all the other Apple PDA rumors that came to nothing, and counting on iSync to provide connectivity for future Palm devices. But if MacNET turns out to be right, we suppose we'll be spending a heckuva lotta cash this summer...