Okay, we know-- technically it's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, which you've all patiently done without for the past several weeks, what with our hiatus and our recent wanderings into Obscure Text Processing territory and the like. But it's been kind of a tough week for Mac users, what with Fearless Leader's cancer surgery and the prospect of his ensuing month off, and while we know that nothing cheers up the community like viciously sticking it to Redmond in a decidedly untoward fashion, somehow we get the feeling that good news about Steve's condition would offer more long-term healing power than another uncouth swipe at Bill Gates's Flowbee haircut or further endless debate on the topic "Steve Ballmer: Nature's Cruel Joke, Or Did Someone Make Him That Way?"

To that end, let's take a break from the Apple stuff for a second, here, and check in on Steve's other company, Pixar, which just posted Street-beating quarterly results earlier this week. Now, despite our obsession with All Things Steve™, we normally wouldn't incorporate Pixarian profit statements into the plotlines of our Apple-flavored soap, because it wanders just slightly too far afield even by our standards. But if you tune in to the webcast of Pixar's Q2 earnings conference call, you'll find it contains a bit of news that can send you off into your weekend with a lighter heart and a wiggle in your walk.

Don't want to bother? No worries, we did it for you; it was no trouble, because the good bit comes right at the very beginning. When Pixar prez Ed Catmull first rocks the mic, he offers this choice assortment of warm fuzzies: "But first, I'd like to share with you an update on Steve Jobs's recuperation from surgery, which I'm sure you've all heard about by now. John Lasseter and I visited Steve, and I'm very happy to report that he's doing great. His recovery is going very well, and he expects to return to work in September. He was cracking jokes, and he gave us the distinct impression that he'd be firing off a lot of email from his PowerBook over the next month. It was really great to see him doing so well."

Now, granted, Catmull was addressing an audience of Wall Street analysts and it's no secret that shares of both PIXR and AAPL took a hit once news of Steve's surgery got out, but try to see Ed's report as more than just a cynical attempt to pull his company's stock price back up. We're filing this as independent corroboration that Steve's doing as well as he'd claimed in his email to Apple employees last Sunday-- even though Ed's shameless PowerBook mention might lead suspicious minds to wonder if he was just reading a statement that Steve had scripted himself. Then again, if Steve is well enough to be micromanaging every word that his coworkers say to the press, that's pretty good news, too. So if you've been holding your breath since the cancer scare started, go ahead and treat yourself to a little oxygen. The man's fine and he'll be cracking skulls again in no time.

By the way, if you're really jonesing for a Microsoft-bashing fix, may we offer the following as a do-it-yourself kit? Faithful viewer Ben tipped us off to a CRN report about how Microsoft is late with the long-awaited Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is supposed to close a lot of the more gaping security holes in that colander of an operating system. The real juice, though, is that CRN has followed InfoWorld's lead and has tagged Windows with the "b" word formerly reserved strictly for Apple use. "Beleaguered operating system," anyone?