Regular viewers are already all too aware that if there's any technology down here at the AtAT compound that we use even half as often as our Macs, it's our TiVo-- and, in fact, if we were forced at gunpoint to choose between living without one or the other, we'd probably opt for a quick and painless death as a far more preferable third option. Which is, of course, why we're all agog over a Business 2.0 article recently pointed out to us by faithful viewer Bob, in which the author claims that an Apple buyout of TiVo would be a match made in digital heaven.

Note that the article doesn't claim that an Apple-TiVo merger is actually in the works, or even in the kicking-around phase; much to the disappointment of jump-to-conclusions types like faithful viewer SebiMeyer (and, of course, ourselves), once you actually read the piece, it's simply the Business 2.0 equivalent of a Marvel "What If...?" comic. But it's a nifty scenario for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that TiVo users are at least as fanatically devoted as Mac users, and tying the two technologies to the same parent company could cross-pollinate platform loyalty to hitherto unprecedented heights.

Here's the main thrust of the proposal: TiVo in reviled by the entertainment industry, who sees it as a threat to advertising revenues (to those guys, fast-forwarding through commercials is a sin second only to rebroadcasting Major League Baseball games without express written consent) and possibly as a future method for the easy swapping of recorded shows on the 'net. (TiVo doesn't officially allow the transfer of TiVo-recorded content, but people have worked around that.) Apple, on the other hand, seems to have a solid relationship with the same industry, what with producing all that video-editing software and managing to accomplish what no one else ever has: an industry-endorsed digital music store that doesn't totally suck. So who better to turn TiVo into a best-of-breed, industry-blessed personal video system than Uncle Steve?

We're sort of torn on the issue, actually, since we're perfectly happy with how TiVo's doing on its own. But if Business 2.0 is right and TiVo faces extinction at the hands of the entertainment industry (who recently sued the makers of the commercial-skipping, show-trading TiVo-rival ReplayTV into bankruptcy), who better to out-TiVo TiVo than Apple? Food for thought. And even if you have no interest in TiVo whatsoever, it's worth checking out the article just to see the words "Apple" and "beleaguered" appear in the same piece wherein the latter term isn't describing the former. History has been made!