So seeing as we don't have time to sleep, eat, or bathe these days, we still haven't actually read Young & Simon's iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, that spankin' new unauthorized biography that's already given us a couple of primo plot twists lately (namely, Steve pulling all the publisher's other books off the shelves of Apple retail stores in retaliation, and charges of near-plagiarism by Alan Deutschman, author of a previous unauthorized bio that dished up its own share of funky melodrama back in the day). But we were able to spare a few seconds to skim another review of the new book, this time the one in USA Today-- and right at the end there's an interesting revelation about our ol' buddy Steve: according to the authors, his latest "outlandish Stevian dream" is "to take back the computer business from Microsoft."

Yes, folks, if Young & Simon are right, then Steve wants to "best Bill Gates"-- and since he's already long surpassed Billy-Boy in the areas of fashion sense, public speaking, dating musicians, and personal hygiene (we heard it from some guy), we have to assume that he's talking about market share. Which may sound like a bit of a stretch, since Windows accounts for ninety-something percent of computers sold and Macs are, in a good quarter, more like one in twenty-five or so. Does Steve seriously believe he can turn those numbers around? Comments at the D: event (as reported by AppleInsider) imply that he just may be crazy enough to think so: "Jobs expressed his belief in the iPod 'halo effect,' noting stronger Mac growth over the company's last few quarters." When someone asked him if Apple could claw its way up to a 10 percent market share, he replied, "It's possible... if people learn about our products, many of them choose them."

Of course, there's a pretty wide gulf of belief between saying 10 percent is "possible" and seriously attempting to wrest majority share away from the Redmond Menace. Steve's secret twelve-point master plan for the destruction of the world's human governments, his rise to iron-fisted Planetary Emperor, and his subsequent sale of the earth's population as cattle to the highest-bidding carnivorous alien lizard race is one thing; thinking he can make Macs someday outsell Wintels, on the other hand, is just insane. It's a glorious and inspiring brand of insanity, to be sure (here's to the crazy ones!), but it's insanity nonetheless.

Then again, maybe our minds are only resistant to the whole "Mac overtakes Windows" scenario because Jobs himself RDF'd us into believing it; we were, after all, in the audience at the 1997 Macworld Expo Boston keynote address when he declared the PC wars to be over and made peace with Bill Gates's Big Giant Head on the satellite uplink. Suppose it was just a ruse to lull the Billster into a false sense of security? Is Steve even now picturing Bill's head on a pike? Are vast and silent wheels already turning behind the scenes, setting the stage for a coup of unimaginable proportions? Do platypuses think we're laughing with them, or at them? And where, pray tell, did we leave our keys?

Only time will tell.