Sweet lord almighty, all hell's broken loose. We can't think of any other way to describe this. If we had to pick one thing, one thing in all the world that we never thought we'd see on an Apple Developer web page, it'd be hulking specimens of the World Wrestling Federation. But there they are-- the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock staring out from Apple's site, promoting the new "very special program" to let Mac game developers advertise their wares to the San Francisco wrestling audience.

Confused yet? It works like this: you, the game developer, pay Apple a flat $15,000. That fifteen grand buys your inclusion in a "three-week long promotion that will boost your brand, drive traffic to your website, and most importantly, dramatically assist in selling your Macintosh gaming titles." How? By slapping your product in ninety thirty-second commercials to be shown on SF's own UPN44 during the WWF Smackdown! UPN44 will produce the ads themselves, which will feature your product while also promoting a contest for viewers to win an "all-expense-paid trip for four to an upcoming WWF pay-per-view event"-- and a copy of your game, of course. Viewers will enter the contest by surfing to a URL given in the commercials and during the shows. After entering, the hope is that those wrestling fans will continue surfing to your company's web site.

We'll say this for Apple: someone's definitely thinking different. (Ly. Whatever.) However, we have to wonder what percentage of San Francisco's wrestling fans are Mac users. We think the promotion would be a lot more effective if the Smackdown had some special bouts during the three-week period that held special appeal for the Mac community who might not otherwise be regular viewers. How about Steve "Turtleneck" Jobs and Avie "College Boy" Tevanian against Bill "The Sweater" Gates and Steve "No-Neck" Ballmer in a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred tag team cage match? That's the kind of event that'd stir up the blood lust in Mac users to the point where they'd be chomping at the bit to buy your 3D splatterfest. Heck, we'd fly out to the West Coast just to watch that match on TV. C'mon, Steve-- it's for the good of the platform.