Remember when we told you that Steve Jobs was getting further and further entrenched in his "Apple Saviour" role? Well, it appears that he may not be content with "interim CEO," so we may have him on the show for another season or two after all. Read about it at Infoseek: Steve spoke at the Macromedia users' conference in San Fransisco today, where an attendee asked him when he'd step into the CEO role full time. Steve has apparently mostly worked through all that nonsense he once spouted about not being interested in the job, because he replied that he's "thinking about it." And it seems that Steve ponders these big decisions best when he's on the beach, because he's heading to Hawaii to decide. (We hope he knows enough to stay away from taboo Tiki gods.)

We haven't had a chance to listen to Steve's address, so we're not sure if he mentioned all this on- or off-mike, but if you're RealAudio-capable, you can listen to the speech here. Apple's made no formal comment on this latest development, but analysts note the difficulty that Apple would have finding anyone willing to try to fill Steve's shoes on the set. AtAT certainly agrees with that sentiment, for better or for worse. Look, the bottom line is, Steve's good for the ratings-- both ours, and Apple's.

thessaSOURCE reports that, as rumored, Apple is indeed laying off employees in preparation for its fourth-quarter results, to be announced next Wednesday. (Have you entered our "Beat the Analysts" contest yet?) In addition, it states that the long-rumored shutdown of the Advanced Technology Group is a confirmed reality. Some ATG engineers will be reassigned to different Apple departments, and others will be laid off. AtAT is saddened by the loss of the group that engendered such technologies as Newton and Quicktime, as well as not-yet-ready-for-prime-time stuff like the 3D Finder and other nifty stuff that you can read about here. (Our favorite is MacHeadroom, which allows the synchronization of Plaintalk text-to-speech with Quicktime movie playback.)

The closing of the ATG gives us a sense of deja vu: Yours Truly lives in the area of Cambridge, MA, where Apple used to have a research lab in Kendall Square. This group worked on technologies like Dylan, a new object-oriented dynamic programming language. In one of Apple's six gazillion reorganizations, the Cambridge lab got shut down. In "celebration" of that event, the employees there produced some snazzy looking t-shirts featuring a Mac dialog box that said something like, "Warning! You are about to cancel the entire Cambridge Lab." with the mouse cursor positioned over the "Cancel" button. The shirt bore the phrase, "Apple: The Power to Cancel Our Very Best." (If anyone out there knows where we could get an image of this shirt design, let us know via the Feedback page.)

Those MacOS Rumors guys keep coming up with the good dirt. With heavy caveats about a possible intentional misinformation campaign, they are whispering about the return of an Apple project from beyond the grave. Apple once had a project called "Star Trek" that attempted to get System 7 running on Intel hardware. The rumored successes and failures of this project vary wildly, but the only thing we all know for sure is that Apple never shipped System 7 for Intel.

Well, like Spock in Star Trek III, the project has struggled back from the abyss. And this time around, it's known, appropriately enough, as "Star Trek: The NeXT Generation." The project is attempting to get Mac OS 8 running on the Intel x86 architecture. The mad genius behind this unholy resurrection? Admiral Steve, of course. The rationale? Apple is currently tied to IBM and Motorola for its supply of PowerPC chips. With ST:TNG up its sleeve, Apple can put the screws on the PPC manufacturers for a better deal, or transition entirely to the Intel platform if things get out of hand. Intel rival chipmaker AMD is rumored to be all too happy to pipe Apple the hardware for the project.

This just in... Remember Mike "Grouchy" Dell's nasty comment about Apple? Then you should visit Patrick Taylor's website. It made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :-)