Trust us, you do not want to hear the litany of obstacles that kept us off the air for the past month and a half, but suffice it to say that the biggest of them, Jack's (literally) month-long headache, has finally abated a good 93 percent or so and therefore Migraine Boy is once more back at the helm. You know those people who claim that the human body can't subsist indefinitely on two or three hours of sleep per night? Well, judging by our recent struggle with a sampler-pack assortment of intriguing medical unpleasantness, apparently they were right. Who knew?

(Also, we got hooked on Veronica Mars. But that's largely beside the point.)

But while some of us have been feeling a smidge under the weather (a handy euphemism that's rather more concise, if less evocative, than "the blunt point of an eight-inch icepick is placed just to the right of the base of the skull and angled slightly upward, then driven all the way through with a sledgehammer, exiting just above the right eye, at which point the icepick is withdrawn with a protracted nails-on-chalkboard screech as cold metal scrapes against the edges of punctured bone and then the whole thing starts all over again and continues almost incessantly for oh, say, five weeks or so"), Apple's stock price currently seems decidedly less so. At production time it was up nearly two whole dollars-- and that's on top of a $2.10 increase last Friday. [Post-production addendum: the closing price Monday was up $1.58, which is still nothing to sneeze at.]

According the TheStreet.com, last week's boost came courtesy of rumors of an imminent Apple-Google Marvel Team-Up; apparently shadowy whispering types are kicking around claims that Google is somehow going to link directly to the iTunes Music Store in some way or another, which would punch a few more heavy-duty staples into the digital music sales crown already so firmly attached to the anthropomorphized Apple's big regal head. And then there was Dell's lousy earnings report: somehow the company actually reported lower-than-expected-- as in, $300 million lower-than-expected-- revenue for last quarter ("Us? Laughing? Why, no, these are tears of sorrow, we swear!"), and what with Dell dropping the third-of-a-billion-dollar ball and Apple's share of the personal computer market growing recently, well, investors seem to have put two and two together, and for once they've gotten an answer at least vaguely approximating four. See? There's a first time for everything!

So what's pushing Apple even further into all-time-high territory today? Well, aside from the continuing effects of the Google-'n'-Dell wackiness from last week, even analysts seem to be going gaga over AAPL once again. Caris & Company issued an upgrade this morning, bumping Apple from "Average" (as if) to "Above Average," and that sort of thing never fails to give a stock a bit of a lift. But probably even more influential was Piper Jaffray declaring AAPL to be its "top recommended large capitalization stock for the rest of 2005," as reported by MarketWatch. PJ analyst Gene Munster (who is, to be fair, usually pretty Apple-friendly) expects Great Things™ moving forward, including "several new product introductions" and ever-rising market share. His current price target is $52-- which Apple will surpass if it has just a couple more trading days like the last two.

Ahhhh... nothin's good for what ails ya like some big green numbers in your Ameritrade portfolio. Morphine, shmorphine. Nurse! More upgrades!

Oh me oh my oh mama. Still, you can't seriously say you didn't think it was going to happen, can you? As soon as people figured out that the prerelease MacIntel kits that Apple's shipping to developers can run Windows with nary a hitch, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that the only thing keeping the x86 port of Mac OS X from running on non-Mac x86 hardware was some sort of custom chip that says "hey, I'm a Mac." And once said chip was identified, it was only a matter of a little more time before someone figured out how to hack Mac OS X to bypass the chip check, thus allowing Mac OS X to run on any random crappy Wintel box out there. And once that happened, it was only a matter of still more time (about 1.6 seconds, we figure) before pirated and cracked copies of Mac OS X for x86 started popping up all over the planet via the peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Which, according to WIRED, has already happened.

Actually, we should backtrack a second, here, and point out that the "custom chip" isn't really just saying "hey, I'm a Mac." It's actually a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, part of an architecture originally slapped together by Microsoft and Intel intended to allow a method of "securing" (i.e. restricting) software and transactions to specific hardware. Since the prerelease developer build of Mac OS X for Intel appears to run just fine on non-Apple hardware once the TPM check is disabled, some hackers insist that "the hack shows that Steve Jobs's company will be turning out machines indistinguishable from any other PC." Which is a stretch... in so many ways. (The day that an iMac is "indistinguishable" from, say, a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion is the day that Jonathan Ive transmogrifies into a pig with wings and then spontaneously combusts.)

After all, let's keep in mind that the developer kits are just that-- hardware and software intended to enable developers to start porting their applications well in advance of actual MacIntels hitting the shelves. Nothing about the developer hardware (other than the basic chip architecture) has to remain unchanged in the final product, so maybe real MacIntels won't just be your basic Wintel guts with a TPM chip wrapped up in a pretty box. Heck, maybe Apple never intended to use TPM in shipping MacIntels, and only planned to use it as an interim mild piracy deterrent. Or maybe it did expect to use TPM in the final product, but after seeing what happened, now plans to go another route. Who's to say? It all seems pretty up in the air to us.

But regardless, now that Mac OS X is out there for any random Windoid to download and install on non-Apple hardware, Uncle Steve must be pretty cheesed off. Or is he? Because the hackers themselves are saying that "getting around the TPM wasn't that hard," and a few conspiracy-minded individuals (stop looking at us like that) are speculating that Apple just "wanted to demonstrate the weaknesses of TPM security." Personally, we find that a little unlikely. We'd much rather go with a scenario that's wholly unlikely, i.e. that Steve always intended for the developer build to be cracked and posted, thus giving the Windows world a free taste of Tiger so he can hook 'em early and they'll be more likely to buy actual Macs later on when the uncrackable (ahem) release version of Mac OS X for Intel exists. Hey, stranger things have happened. In movies. And maybe a miniseries or two.

Of course, the real question is, who's gonna get sued this time?

We know it's wicked old news by now, but we've actually got a timely reason for mentioning the Mighty Mouse today: namely, we're using one right now. See, we trucked on down to the Apple Store Northshore last night in hopes that a Mac Genius or two might be able to cure an ailing iPod (yes, everything around here is sick; thanks for pointing that out), which has a flaky hold switch and occasionally forgets it has a Click Wheel. Since this behavior showed up entirely out of the blue starting last week, we suspect that the trouble is psychosomatic and the iPod is just bummed out over this whole "Apple was too slow on the draw and missed patenting the iPod user interface" brouhaha which surfaced over at AppleInsider last Tuesday. We know it sounds wacky, but the iPod seemed to be recovering from the news-- until The Independent reported (as pointed out by faithful viewer Greg Hill) that Microsoft beat Apple to the patent, and some people are speculating that Apple "may be forced to pay royalties to Microsoft for every iPod it sells."

Blammo. Instant relapse, bye-bye hold switch.

So like we said, we took the patient down to the Apple Store Northshore for a look-see, a mechanical adjustment, a session of vigorous psychoanalysis, whatever... only to find that the Genius Bar was closed for the weekend, as it had been converted into a second check-out counter to handle the overflow of rabid sales traffic during this state's no-sales-tax weekend. Denied medical attention for the sake of wanton orgiastic spending? That's as American as apple pie, so how could we possibly complain? And so, just so we didn't waste the trip, we fulfilled our economy-stimulating consumerist obligations and bought some in-ear headphones, a three-pack of silicone iPod sleeves, and Apple's latest input device inexplicably named after the Man of Steel legend adapted for rodents.

Wouldja believe we didn't even bother trying one at the store? We just picked up the box and carried to the register; indeed, the first time we laid eyes on one of these doohickeys up close and personal was when we took ours out of its box. But since we've never really been fans of multiple-button mice or scroll wheels before, we were eager to see whether Apple had done it so right it could change our minds. After all, Apple designers did manage to get us to become card-carrying members of the "You'll Take My Scrolling Trackpad When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead PowerBook" Society, right?

Long story short(er), so far we're giving it just about as many thumbs up as we have thumbs. It feels just like the Pro Mouse it replaces, so we've got no complaints about how it handles. The magic touch-sensitive left-click/right-click thing takes a little adjusting; you have sort of have to click while lifting your index finger to make the right-click work, but it's surprisingly easy to get used to. The teensy scroll ball, meanwhile, is a freakin' work of utter genius, and almost as natural-feeling as the two-finger scrolling featured on Apple's latest portables-- better, in a way, because it resists slightly and "clicks" while rolling to provide some satisfying tactile feedback. Click while touching it, and bingo: Mouse Button 3. Squeeze the sides of the mouse, and that's Mouse Button 4. Map one to Exposé and the other to Dashboard and suddenly you'll feel like you have more hands than usual.

The best thing is that the additional features do a pretty good job of staying out of the way when you don't need them; you can use the Mighty Mouse as a plain ol' Clark Kent Pro Mouse without noticing much of a difference. No, it's not as programmable as other third-party multiple-button mice, nor does it have as many buttons, but its physical design and use mostly retains the simplicity of the classic one-button Mac paradigm, so you probably won't find yourself tripping over your fingers all the time. So if you're a multiple-mouse-button junkie from way back when, the Mighty Mouse is probably not for you-- but if you're mostly a single-button kinda guy or gal, this sucker'll give you extra functionality when you need it without requiring you to manipulate your mouse hand like a concert pianist every time you want to empty the Trash. If you have the chance, take one for a test drive. It's not for everyone, but by golly, it sure is for us.

Meanwhile, we're taking the sick iPod back tonight, so keep those fingers crossed.