Heads up, hardcore Disney-Apple conspiracy theorists; you may suddenly have a much tougher time crafting your elaborate scenarios of collusion between Steve's gang and the minions of Walt. Rumors that Disney would buy Apple outright have been making the rounds since the "Steamboat Willie" days, though of course, so far that unholy alliance has yet to gel-- "still in the planning stages," as the true believers might put it. However, there have been visible signs of corporate friendliness between Apple and Disney over the past few years, due in no small part to Uncle Steve's tightrope act of heading up two companies. Pixar may pretty much run itself, but Steve's still the figurehead, and since Pixar's in bed with Disney, when Steve's other company needs to, say, debut a certain minute-long black-and-white Richard Dreyfuss-narrated commercial, when better than during the network broadcast premiere of Pixar's Toy Story on the Disney-owned ABC? You get our drift.

However, faithful viewer KillSwitch had to go and throw a monkey wrench into the whole situation by pointing out a rather puzzling CNET article. It seems that when the Mouse was looking to buy a slew of computers, rather than buddy up to good ol' Steve for some kickin' hardware in whimsical Disney-friendly industrial designs, the company instead inked a deal with none other than Compaq. Reportedly the "three-year, $100 million deal" officially dubs Compaq the "preferred technology provider" of the Magic Kingdom's Internet division; Disney's web sites will all be run on Compaq servers. Now, given the fact that the server-friendly Mac OS X isn't actually out yet, if the deal were just for servers, we could almost understand Disney's decision to skip Apple and talk to Compaq-- but the deal also specifies "desktop computers and laptops" to fuel the various Disneyites throughout the rank and file of the corporation. Which means that instead of happily bonding with gorgeous Ruby iMac DVs, Disney personnel are going to have to tool along on some decidedly unmagical-looking Deskpros or something.

As for what Disney gets in return for using Compaq's blah hardware, the Big Q agrees to "buy ads on Disney-owned web sites." It's all about the clicks, baby. So is Steve huddled deep in an underground Cupertino bunker, raging at the treachery of those flubs at Disney and plotting his revenge? Will he somehow attempt to strongarm the conscientious magicians at Pixar into intentionally making Monsters, Inc. a flop purely out of spite? Just how cold do they keep Walt's cryogenically-frozen head, anyway? All will be revealed to the patient and stout of heart...