Well, as usual, April 1st brought a slew of fake stories and announcements meant to bring a smile to our faces. The first one we noticed was the press release over at MacCentral, which announced Bare Bones Software's first hardware product-- a PCI card "text accelerator." Definitely a good start. And Mac OS Rumors followed up in solid form, with stories about Netscape developing Star Trek products, SGI and Apple merging to form "Crayon Graphics," and Apple reanimating the corpse of Elvis for the "Think Different" ad campaign by using an "unannounced feature in the G3 chip." (Ha ha ha... very funny, guys-- like we'd ever believe that the King is actually dead. Try something within the realm of believability next year.)

And as if to prove that a sense of humor runs throughout the entire Mac community, MacInTouch-- which, as a serious news site, usually displays all the humor and fun of a sedated Al Gore-- ran a truly inspired (and occasionally sharply satirical) piece claiming that Apple is buying MacInTouch for $1 million in Apple stock. It manages to sound realistic while still being genuinely funny and taking catty swipes at everything from Quicktime licensing keys, to the ill-fated Apple Club, to Apple's sole focus on returning the company to profitability-- at the expense of listening to and fulfilling its customers' needs. Kudos to MacInTouch for our favorite April Fool's joke on the web. (A "new pricing structure" email message circulated to Kepler Internet Solutions customers takes the overall prize, however, although the "Nirvana Reunion Tour" ad we heard on WFNX this morning was pretty good, too.)

That's why we love April Fool's Day: it reminds everyone that we've all got to keep a sense of humor about these things. For instance, we heard another hoax that claims that a group of people are actually boycotting Quicktime 3.0 due to the new licensing fees. (What's that? That one's true? Hmmm. Never mind...)

Okay, yes, it's true-- Apple's finally started charging certain licensing fees for Quicktime, its cross-platform digital video architecture. This move has proved, shall we say, "unpopular" with folks who are used to getting previous incarnations of Quicktime for free. But the license fees aren't as bad as many people are making them out to be. MacCentral's got Don Crabb's unique perspective on the whole shebang, done up in his own inimitable fashion.

First of all, there's the license-to-use. Your basic, run-of-the-mill Quicktime 3.0 is free to use-- you can download it and install it and play Quicktime movies as you always have, and you won't have to pay a dime. However, certain features, particularly authoring features, only exist in Quicktime 3.0 Pro, an "unlocked" version that allows features like full-screen, full-motion capture and goodies like that. That version will run you $29.95. And truth be told, we at AtAT are a little bummed about that ourselves, but not overly so-- especially given how much time and money Apple has obviously invested in the development of this software.

But what we really don't get is all the people complaining about the royalty fees for Quicktime distribution: $1 per shipped copy of Quicktime 3.0, $2 for each shipped copy of Pro. First of all, since Quicktime is free to download and will continue to be included with Apple system software, you don't have to include Quicktime on your shipping multimedia product-- tell people to get it themselves if they don't have it already. And secondly, if you do want to include the code on the disc for your customers, you can avoid paying the royalty fee entirely by including a little commercial in the installer hawking the $29.95 upgrade to Pro. Frankly, we just don't see the big deal here. Apple's done a great job with Quicktime 3.0, effectively finally shipping a video architecture that accomplishes what the original version of Quicktime could only hope to attain one day. And now that it's finally done, it's not unreasonable to want to get paid for it. (shrug)

Look, up in the sky-- is it a bird? A plane? Nope, it's Super Steve, the interim Apple CEO who works miracles of media manipulation by focusing his Reality Distortion Field on his unsuspecting foes. However, faithful viewers of AtAT are privy to Super Steve's secret identity. When the super-powered interim CEO isn't battling the forces of evil in Cupertino, he's living incognito in his role as mild-mannered head of Pixar Animation Studios, the folks who brought you "Toy Story." And yesterday was one of those days on which Steve wore his Pixar hat, as he appeared at the Variety/Schroders Big Picture conference, as reported by Wired News.

Granted, CEO of a hugely successful up-and-coming computer animation studio is not the lowest of profiles as far as secret identities goes, but Batman already took "millionaire playboy" and none of the other stock secret identities are all that much fun. ("Mild-mannered reporter?" Puh-lease.) Still, if Steve is really intending to hide his other life from the public eye, you'd think he'd be more careful about letting his superhuman powers show through in public. Yesterday, Steve announced that Pixar would follow up its recent short "Geri's Game" (which, incidentally, won an Oscar last week) with "A Bug's Life" in November, "Toy Story II" in 1999, and an undisclosed secret feature film in 2000. Yes, as part of its five-film deal with Disney, Pixar plans to release a full-length animated feature film each year-- a feat only matched by the almighty and immortal Walt-Man himself.

With a release schedule like that, it's no wonder that Jobs has been hesitant to accept the full-time Apple CEO spot. Even superheroes have their limits, and the strains of juggling his Pixar duties and the drama-soaked zoo known as Apple Computer couldn't possibly leave much time left over for things like family. The real question is, what exactly are Steve's limits?