You can argue that turnaround artist Gil Amelio began Apple's recovery until you're blue in the face-- lord knows, he still thinks so-- but from our perspective, it's plain to see that Steve Jobs was really the one who brought the patient back from its near-death experience. Sure, Amelio had some decent ideas, but the execution was lacking, and the man could never win over the press because he had the personal charisma and the showmanship of Al Gore on Prozac. If you ask us, Gil's most important contribution to the process was bringing Jobs back on board so that he could grab control of the company again. The most crucial battle in the war for Apple's survival was fought with the press, and who better to fight it that a man whose Reality Distortion Field is legendary? And for those who doubt Steve's commitment to the cause, he saved Apple from the brink of death and received darn close to no financial compensation for doing it. Face it; the man simply has something to prove.

In fact, as a CNET article points out, Jobs didn't even receive a salary from Apple last year, and he didn't get paid in 1997, either. Poor guy... perhaps we should take up a collection? On the other hand, Jobs finally holds a substantial number of shares in Apple's stock. Remember how Apple's interim CEO and chairman of the board had only a single share last year? Well, now he's got 10,001, which is one third of the 30,000 options they offered him back in 1997. And considering that those shares are now worth about $400,000, maybe we shouldn't feel so bad after all. (It's still a lot less than Amelio took from the company, especially when you include his bonus for juggling the books to give Apple a "profit" in 1996.)

Anyway, it's always been clear that Jobs' motivation for his hours at Apple has not been monetary. Remember, this is a guy who built one of the biggest computer companies in the world, only to hire a guy who kicked him out. Then the company faltered and nearly tanked, when they finally came crawling back. There's no question that Apple is close to Steve's heart, and wanting to prove the naysayers wrong is a powerful force and more motivating than money-- especially to a guy who's raking in the dough from Pixar. Pride and chutzpah make the world go 'round...

Of course, if you want to talk about the really big bucks, let's discuss Imatec's gargantuan lawsuit against Apple. These are the guys who are suing for $1.1 billion, claiming that Apple infringed on Imatec patents when creating its ColorSync color management technology. It's like a bad dream from which Apple can't awaken: after so much work pulling the company back from the abyss, along comes a lawsuit that might punt them right over the edge. Have you noticed that you don't hear much about this suit from the Mac-centric press? Considering that Apple stands to lose up to $3.3 billion (since Imatec alleges that Apple violated the patents on purpose, treble damages may apply), it's no wonder. Heck, we bet that even the higher-ups at Apple are trying not to think about it. "Maybe if we ignore it, it'll go away..."

Unfortunately, it's not going away. According to a Wired News article, a federal judge has basically told Apple to pull its collective fingers out of its ears and stop singing "La la la, we can't hear you." Apple had requested a trial delay of up to three years, claiming that its legal team needed that long to pull together evidence, but the Powers That Be aren't buying it. Now that a judge has ordered them to quit stalling, we may soon see a courtroom drama with higher stakes than even "Redmond Justice." Sure, Microsoft's trial could potentially lead to sweeping changes across the computer industry, but dammit, we're talking about Apple here.

As things stand, a trial date still hasn't been set. Imatec is still pulling their "pre-wrestling match theatrics" stunts after any progress in the case by issuing new press releases saying how sure they are that they're going to win-- which makes us increasingly suspicious that they're just angling for a fat settlement. We haven't seen Imatec's patents and we know very little about ColorSync, but Imatec's whole demeanor since this thing started just makes them look like they're trying to raise cash via scare tactics. Apple, for their part, continue to claim that Imatec's claims are without merit... but even if that's 100% true, the stakes are high enough to make anybody sweat. Think of it this way: it's easy to stand on one leg for a minute. Is it still as easy when you know that failure means you lose your house, your car, your job, and... your leg? Faced with that scenario, do you take the bet, or give up your car to back out? Personally, we hope Apple fights-- and wins.

Who knew that this Pentium III thing would open up such a can of worms? For those just joining us, Intel recently announced that their upcoming Pentium III processor would include a "serial number" that could be read by the computer and sent to web sites for identity verification purposes. While such a scheme might cause big cartoony dollar signs to pop up in the eyes of companies running e-commerce web sites, it has privacy watchdog groups seeing red. They say this serial number scheme could herald the death of anonymity on the Internet, since remote sites could track who you are and where you've been based on the ID number of your computer's processor. After they organized a boycott, Intel agreed to ship the chips with the numbering scheme turned off, to be enabled by the end-users if they wanted to benefit from the expanded e-commerce capabilities. For some people, though, that's just not enough. We now join our regularly scheduled broadcast, already in progress...

The latest chapter in this saga shows Arizona State Representative Steve May drafting a bill that attempts to ban the Pentium III's ID numbering mechanism entirely. According to a CNET article, the proposed bill would ban serial numbered chips altogether, and computers using such processors would also be verboten. If the bill passes, it would even be illegal to manufacture chips like the Pentium III in Arizona-- which could make things really tough for Intel, who has two manufacturing plants in that state.

Unfortunately, the bill as worded would also make several high-end workstations illegal, such as those made by Sun, which contain serial-numbered chips to prevent software piracy. And beyond that, the proposed law could very possibly be found unconstitutional for violating the commerce clause. However those concerns are probably irrelevant anyway, as we doubt the bill will ever be passed into law. We see the bill as more of a message to Intel than a serious attempt to stop the Pentium III by legal means; if people are upset enough about the privacy issues that lawmakers are drafting bills about them, then perhaps Intel will take notice and rethink their plans.