Rule number one of successful television production: give the rabble what it wants. We've received a staggering volume of mail from viewers demanding that the "Little Buddy" mystery be added to the AtAT script, many of whom have already concluded that our failure to pounce upon such suitable soap fodder so far is damning proof of our own involvement in the cover-up. The sad, dull reality of the situation, however, is simply that with limited airtime for each episode, the original "Little Buddy" controversy just didn't make the cut. The fact that Mac OS 9 makes unannounced connections to an Apple server named after the Skipper's pet name for Gilligan just didn't seem all that sinister when Mac OS Rumors first posted the story. (You also have to take into account the AtAT staff's fundamental impatience for All Things Gilligan. Come on-- if it was a three hour tour, why'd they pack all those clothes?)

Anyway, things got a little more interesting when some puzzled Mac OS 9 users asked Apple what, exactly, was up with their Macs automatically contacting littlebuddy.apple.com and were told that Apple doesn't have a server called "littlebuddy.apple.com"-- despite the fact that anyone with a web browser and an Internet connection can see that the server exists. In fact, Netcraft even reports that it's a Solaris box running Netscape Enterprise. Sure, it returns a "Server Error," but the server is live, it is accessible, and it is being hit by Mac OS 9 for some reason. Given Apple's denial that the machine exists at all, we can understand why people who fall on the right side of the Paranoia Bell Curve might suspect some kind of stupendous privacy violation.

Moreover, following a tip from faithful viewer Robert Fernando (which he presumably culled from Mac OS Rumors's latest update on the story), we tried loading up http://littlebuddy.apple.com/help/ and had to wonder at the curious result: "So far, there is no index for this book..." That's... not very helpful. On the other hand, viewing the page's source code is rather interesting, since it reveals that the page was composed on a (gasp!) Windows NT system by a mysterious figure known as "Sanborn Hodgkins." MOSR didn't follow that tantalizing lead to the next logical level, so we figured we'd don our stylin' deerstalker caps and see where else that distinctive name showed up on the 'net. Guess what? Sanborn's listed as the Developmental Editor in the credits to Apple's own Inside Macintosh: Networking. (There's also a book called Excel : A Power User's Guide by a J. Sanborn Hodgkins, who may or may not be the same guy.)

So what does all this mean? Well, not a lot when taken on its own merits, we admit. Thank heaven somebody scrounged up some more info that pretty much puts the issue to rest. Given that littlebuddy has pages called EarthlinkTest.html, MacBuddyTest.html, and maintenance.html, it seems clear that the server is used as part of Mac OS 9's automatic EarthLink signup system. Further evidence surfaced when one dogged individual dissected Mac OS 9's "Setup Internet Support" extension and found a URL that connects to the littlebuddy server. So that's all there is-- nothing more sinister than a mechanism to sign up for EarthLink Internet service.

But if you're the type who enjoys paranoia, don't fret-- there are still plenty of strange factors to sustain your conspiracy theory. For one thing, why would this be part of an ISP sign-up, given that an existing Internet connection is required to get to littlebuddy in the first place? For another, why is a member of Apple's networking team using Windows NT (and possibly writing books about Excel)? And why, pray tell, is Apple denying that littlebuddy.apple.com even exists in the first place? Oh, sure, there are rational answers to all three questions... but there are also plenty of ways to spin a web of deception, betrayal, and world domination that would make Mulder weep-- especially given EarthLink's ties to Scientology and Germany's take on that group. Have fun!