Kudos Check! It's been a while since we've mentioned the last award thrust upon Apple for being the most amazingest company ever or whatever, so we figured this would be a good time to fill you in on the latest: according to MacMinute, Apple has finally been added to the Wired 40, Wired Magazine's "annual ranking of the 40 companies driving the global economy." And far from being just another yawner award, Apple's addition to the list is a bona fide get-down-'n'-jiggy-wit'-it occasion, because not only is this the first time ever that the mag has figured Apple for a player "driving the global economy," but Apple has also debuted at a shockingly high third place. Time for a Happy Dance!

Why such a high ranking? Because Apple "has created the kind of platform-and-content synergy that gadget makers dream of"-- in other words, by selling a ton of iPods and backing them up with the iTunes Music Store. Wired cites Apple's "55% of the music-player market" and gushes almost obscenely over the (admittedly Herculean) accomplishment of having secured the iTMS go-ahead from all five major labels. And despite the fact that the iTMS is still boxed firmly within U.S. borders and iPod sales still aren't exactly raking in billions, apparently that's good enough for Wired to rank Apple as the third most important company when it comes to keeping the world's economy chugging forward. (We'd feel even weirder about the whole thing if the two companies ranked even higher than Apple weren't Google and Amazon.)

While we haven't seen the actual article yet (it doesn't hit the 'net until tomorrow, and we're way too lazy to drag our kiesters to a newsstand), the excerpt quoted by MacMinute reveals a very interesting omission from Wired's praise: the Macintosh. We can't say for sure until tomorrow, but apparently the Power Mac G5 and Mac OS X and all that fun stuff means diddly when it comes to the Wired 40; the list has been ignoring Apple completely since it began ranking companies in 1998 (hello, iMac year?!), and apparently Apple hadn't done a thing for the global economy until it started selling Spice Girls tracks at 99 cents a pop. No wonder we don't understand anything about economics.

So if nothing else, this is just one more thing to make the paranoids' heads implode a little more; Wired never saw Apple as a world player until the company branched out into music and consumer electronics, and suddenly the magazine ranks it as the third most influential player in the world-- due entirely to non-Mac contributions. Better double up on the Thorazine, folks, because this sounds like another sign for the paranoiacs that Apple will ditch the Mac entirely and go full-on iPod. (Just take a deep breath and keep repeating to yourselves, "Tiger at WWDC... Tiger at WWDC...)

Oh, and congrats to Apple on its third place debut in the Wired 40! Just think, guys, if you drop that crazy "Mac" project and get, say, a DVD rental service online by the end of the year, maybe next year you'll find yourselves at Number 1! Dare to dream...