Say, um, Steve... about that other company you run... not to disrespect your boundaries, or anything, but it's recently come to our attention that Pixar is apparently making some rash decisions, and you may want to "correct" its behavior before things get out of hand. Don't get us wrong; we're huge fans of both Toy Story movies and A Bug's Life, and Monsters, Inc. looks like it's going to be a hit, too-- which is why we're a mite concerned to hear about the company's recent computer platform choices.

It's a well-known fact that traditionally Pixar has relied upon massive farms of SGI UNIX systems to render the 3D images which comprise Pixar's films. But what's this? Faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri pointed out a Wall Street Journal article about how Linux is taking Hollywood by storm, beating out Microsoft in creative houses. Normally a story like that would warm the cockles of our hearts (more so, if we knew what cockles were), but there's one line in the article which gave us pause: "Pixar Animation Studios, which helped bring Walt Disney Co. into computer-generated animation with 'Toy Story,' is also converting its workstations to Linux." Now, we have to ask: if Pixar is going to go through all the upheaval to switch computer platforms from one version of UNIX to another Unix-like OS such as Linux, why on earth aren't they switching to Mac OS X instead? After all, it's UNIX at its core, and we hear that Steve may have a little pull at Pixar. Why not get the next big Pixar release produced entirely on Macs?

But even more disappointing than the news of an ongoing Pixar migration to Linux is this other quote, which gave us one serious case of the heebie-jeebies (right in the cockles, no less): "The studio was in the process of switching from SGI technology to Microsoft's Windows NT platform, but shifted to Linux in midstream as it gained momentum and credibility." Holy Dodged Bullet, Batman! Pixar running NT? Talk about your doomsday scenarios... Granted, Hollywood is a great place for irony (for instance, the Dreamworks flick Shrek was borne of Linux instead of NT, and we're told that Bill Gates just happens to own a chunk of Dreamworks), but a Jobs-run company migrating to Windows when Mac OS X is available would be too much to bear. Our cockles could never take it.