You know, we hadn't seen much buzz on the Disney-Pixar saga in the past couple of days, and what with all the Jobsian drama that particular plot thread had pumped into our pulsing veins recently, we have to admit that we were starting to feel the first sick proddings of withdrawal. Faithful viewer N Gray had pointed out a Reuters article about Roy Disney and Stan Gold's goal to get at least a fifth of Disney's investors to vote against CEO Michael Eisner and three of his crony yes-men board members at March 3rd's annual investors' meeting, which is interesting and keeps the plot building as Eisner's imminent doom draws nigh, but Steve doesn't appear in the article and neither does Pixar, so, frankly, it's not going to do much to keep us from seeing babies crawling across the ceiling.

Really, the closest thing we have to a new and vaguely on-topic development in the Disney ruckus is a spinoff plot involving an unsubstantiated rumor that, following that surprise Comcast bid for Disney, Pixar may soon face a buyout offer from, of all international megaconglomerates, Sony. Faithful viewer Pedro Henriquez tried to help us ride out our jones by telling us that, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Pixar's stock had spiked almost seven percent yesterday following rumors that Sony was looking to buy Steve's Little Animation Company That Could, and that helped us a little, but not much-- like maybe keeping the shakes down long enough to get to the methadone clinic.

"But AtAT," you protest, "a buyout of Pixar would be huge! If Steve's alleged behind-the-scenes involvement in the unEisnering of Disney was indeed prompted by his desire to fold Pixar into Disney proper and run the whole shebang, a Sony buyout throws the World's Second-Largest Monkey Wrench right into those big turny gear-looking things!" Well, okay, sure-- assuming there were any chance whatsoever that a buyout could ever take place. But you have to admit, folks, the prospect of a Pixar-Sony merger is tough to take seriously for anyone who remembers the Sony-Apple rumors from a few years back. Whispers that Sony was about to make a play for Apple hit the streets and stock prices did weird things-- for a few minutes. Practically before anyone could even say "Mac VAIO," Sony's guy-in-charge stepped up to deny any and all rumors of an Apple takeover bid, and even went so far as to say that Sony wouldn't even entertain an offer if Apple extended one.

Now, couple that with the fact that the reason Sony's boss was so quick to deny the Apple buyout rumors was reportedly because he thinks Steve's a jerk and could never stomach the thought of working with anyone so fundamentally lacking in humility, and you might start to get a sense of why we figure that a Pixar-Sony merger is about as likely to happen as a Celine Dion-Lemmy from Motörhead duet album of classic Hebrew folk songs.

Then again, whereas Sony's CEO pushed a grandmother and three baby carriages into heavy traffic in his desperate rush to get to a microphone to deny the Apple buyout rumor, as far as the Pixar thing goes, Sony's only comment is that it refuses to comment on rumors. Hmmm... If Steve himself didn't own 60% of Pixar's stock, we'd almost think there was a chance something might happen. Almost.

Attention, .Mac subscribers (and we know you're out there): you may have already heard, but we frequently run into members who never seem to notice Apple's periodic little bonus offers to the nice folks who shell out 99 clams a year. These are the people who let their free iPhoto prints expire and never download their free software before the offer ends, which is a darn shame, because you can really boost your value-for-money if you find a decent perk every now and again. For example, need a copy of Keynote? .Mac subscribers get $30 off. Find a couple more values like that and your yearly membership fee is practically paid for.

And if free iPhoto prints and discounts on software just don't do it for you, you might be interested to know that Apple's latest goody for .Macfolk breaks new ground: this time you get to save some moolah on the hardware bill. No, it's not a discount on a new Mac, or indeed on any Apple product... but if iMovie 4 is calling your name and you're in the market for a new DV camcorder to unleash the Spielberg within (and you just know he's starting to feel cramped in there, what with your grossly enlarged liver and that surgical sponge they accidentally left in you during your appendectomy), for a limited time you can save 10% off any in-stock model at an Apple retail store.

Catches? Nothing that isn't stated up front: the camera you want has to be in stock, and this deal applies only to retail store purchases, not online orders. Apparently all you have to do is bring in "a printout of the .Mac Welcome page," presumably the one that appears if you're actually a member. (If you are, there's a little thing at the bottom that mentions the discount; if not, no go, Pokey Joe.) Oh, and you have to take advantage of the offer by the end of March, so if you're counting on using your tax refund to finance your fledgling filmmaking career, you may want to file nice and early.

This is a pretty nice offer, when you think about it, and we're not just saying that because it's a slow news day. (Well, okay, maybe just a little bit.) If you buy a nice camcorder that normally costs over a thousand smackers, your savings from the .Mac discount is actually greater than your entire year's .Mac subscription fee in the first place, and that sounds like a heckuva deal if you were going to buy a camcorder anyway. (Truth be told, we don't actually know offhand if the retail stores even stock any $1000+ models, but hey, it's a nice thought, isn't it?)

What's interesting, though, is that right now you apparently don't need to sign in with a valid .Mac account to get the discount-- just going to the .Mac home page with a browser that's been used with a valid account seems sufficient. We haven't done extensive testing on this, but it looks to us that as long as .Mac finds a cookie from a previous valid .Mac login session, the home page includes the "present a printout of this .Mac page" box. Who knows? Maybe the stores are instructed to confirm that the account listed in the "Hi, Username" box is in fact owned by you, but we really doubt it. But none of you non-.Mac subscribers would actually stoop so low as to take advantage of an offer not intended for you, right? Nobody tilts Pepsi bottles, either.

Then again, it might all be sorta moot anyway, since 10% off Apple retail prices for its stocked camcorders isn't necessarily all that skippy a deal in the first place. A quick bit of digging will probably let you find the same cameras from reputable sellers for even cheaper than 10% off Apple's price. Just as a f'rinstance, consider the Canon Elura 50: normally $699 from Apple, $629 with the .Mac discount, and just $559.94 from Amazon-- and Amazon generally doesn't charge sales tax, and offers free shipping, to boot. Still, the specific model you want may well be priced very attractively with the .Mac discount (Apple beats Amazon on the Sony DCR-TRV38, for example), so it's probably worth investigating.

And for heaven's sake, when you unleash the Spielberg within, make sure you offer him a towel.

Far be it from us to go pooping on people's parties, especially heading right into a weekend-- miniPod weekend, no less. Still, sometimes we see people getting all jump-up-and-downy about some allegedly amazing Apple sales figure or profit metric, and that's fine if the numbers do indeed warrant some celebratory periodic vertical repositioning, but every once in a while folks go all googly-eyed for a number that really isn't all that worth getting excited about. Should that bother us? No, of course not. Does it? Well, yeah. Are we going to whine about it? A little. Will we ever stop asking questions and then answering them ourselves? Shut up.

So here's the latest good news number that's got some people doing a little jig: BusinessWeek is talking about the "best gains in 31 years" when it comes to corporate profits, and in the technology division, "Apple Computer Inc. recorded the largest increase for the group, a 552% jump in annual profits to $137 million, thanks to strong sales of its computers and the iPod." a 552% profit increase? A higher percentage increase than any other tech company? Clearly it's time to do that jumping up and down thing. Why, even Microsoft's profits "rose just 9%." In your face, Redmond!

Except, of course, percentage increases are almost useless for comparative purposes like this. Sure, Apple boosted its profit 552% over the previous year-- but it still "only" pulled in $137 million. That may sound like a lot to losers like you and us, and in high tech it's still pretty respectable, especially with plenty of companies losing money these past few years. But anyone who's getting down and funky with their bad selves because of Apple's 552% increase while Microsoft's profit growth was "just 9%" might want to compare the actual profits recorded by the two companies, as opposed to the percentage increases: Apple made $137 million, and Microsoft made $8.9 billion. In other words, Microsoft made 65 times as much as Apple in profit, and even the absolute increases don't necessarily compare well: Apple increased its profit by $116 million, while Microsoft boosted its profit by $735 million. Suddenly the jumping up and down gets a lot less boisterous.

But that's what happens when you compare relative percentages; numbers can look just about any way you want. Not that Apple's growth isn't good, or even that the 552% increase isn't something to be happy about; it means that Apple had kind of a rough year in 2002 and bounced back in 2003. But comparing it favorably to Microsoft's profit growth when Microsoft has so much less room to grow in a percentage sense seems a little silly to us. We suppose we should be thankful that none of the companies tracked broke even in 2002 and made $1.38 in 2003; Apple would have come in second to the amazing ∞% profit increase of SmallFryTech, Inc.

But you can keep jumping up and down if you want to-- it is the weekend, after all.