PAUL BOUTIN — Vista or OS X? The star reviewers at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both point out Microsoft's new operating system (a) requires a new, beefed-up PC to use its best features, and (b) seems like an inferior copy of Apple's Mac OS X. David Pogue and Walt Mossberg are both known Mac fans. Each spends a good chunk of his review praising OS X over Vista. It leaves a reader wondering: Should I buy a Vista PC or get one of those Macs, and why didn't they tell me which? Are Pogue and Mossberg appeasing Mac fanboys without actually advocating Apple? Were they ordered not to blurt out VISTA SUCKS GET A MAC? After the jump, Pogue takes the bait.

· The second night of American Idol is only slightly less huge than the first, pulling in 36.9 million viewers between 8-10 p.m. This thing's ready to burn out any second now, we can feel it. [Variety]
· Actor Matt Dillon is assimilated by the CAA agent-Borg, voluntarily entering their blood-draining embrace after being dazzled by their shiny new Century City headquarters. [THR]
· CBS picks up the 15th and 16th editions of Survivor, which will both air in the 07-08 season. Publicity-attracting concepts for the planned installments haven't yet been announced, but insiders expect a new, human sacrifice element to be added to the tribal council segment during one of the upcoming cycles. [Variety]
· Kyra Sedgwick signs a new deal with TNT that will keep her on The Closer through its seventh season, grant her a producer title, and pay her a reported $250,000-300,000 per episode. For a basic cable show? Really? [THR]
· In news as surprising as American Idol's ratings, Apple sold a lot of iPods over the holidays, solidifying the music player as the leading gift for those who couldn't be bothered to think of something original to give their loved ones. [Variety]

PAUL BOUTIN — True story in my inbox: "I just went into the Apple store in Soho to buy the Apple TV device. Asked the shop assistant. Clearly not the first. February, he answered, tersely." Hey pal, didn't you pay attention? None of the gadgets unveiled today — the iPhone, Apple TV, the new Airport Extreme with 802.11n — will hit the stores for at least a month. Whatever happened to "and it's available TODAY?"

PAUL BOUTIN — Hold the phone. Take a closer look at the image that took over Apple's front door this week. It's 744 pixels wide and 420 high. Recognize that ratio? Those are the 16:9 dimensions of an HDTV screen, not the 4:3 of iTunes video downloads. Apple's teaser does recall the Monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose only readable information was the perfect 1 to 4 to 9 ratio of its sides.

PAUL BOUTIN — Apple fans are already circling the San Francisco site where Steve Jobs will kick off Macworld with one of his legendary live performances Tuesday morning. Part of the appeal is His Steveness' awesome stage presence, which rivals Van Halen circa 1979. But there's another component to a Jobs show: Gadgets. Surprise new Apple gadgets. In the past, he's hauled out reshaped Macs and impossibly small iPods. This time, Steve's expected to reach into his jeans and pull out the long-rumored iPod phone. Do you really think he'll do what you expect? For the lowdown on Tuesday's surprise, and the story of how Microsoft failed to steal Steve's groove, read on.

• So, the new version of Blogger is finally out of beta! Yippee! But what about the dozens of other products, still stuck either in beta — even mainstays like Gmail — or in Google Labs? Just a few weeks ago, Valleywag readers said Joga Bonito will be the next to go. [BloggerBuzz]

SCOTT KIDDER — Steve Jobs is one of the Valley's most famous comeback kids. Kicked to the curb by Apple in the 1980s, Jobs went on to buy The Graphics Group for $5 million — now known as Pixar, sold to the Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion. He also founded NeXT computer, only to have it bought by Apple some ten years later for $402 million, bringing him back to the company that he had resigned from some ten years earlier.

NICK DOUGLAS — Good deals are obvious. Great deals are not. News Corp's $580-million purchase of MySpace was "Murdoch's Folly" no more when Google paid $900 million to power MySpace search. In that spirit, here are the top nine business moves from 2006 that don't make sense — at first. Below, the video that started Deal #1.

"At Blu-ray backer LG's annual dealer show, a previously announced LG Blu-ray player was nowhere to be found. LG product development director Tim Alessi had this to say: 'we will provide an announcement when the time is right.'" — Slashdot

What happens when you put a Powerbook G3 into a microwave? This happens.

Just discovered Drivl.com, a clever daily comedy site with articles like "The Worst-of-Web-2.0 Awards," "Workplace Kama Sutra" (tales of sex in Indian call centers) and "Seven Phases of Owning an iPod" (pictured). Its low Alexa rank indicates this site is an undiscovered gem. Steal the jokes for your water-cooler conversation before this site catches on.

Apple kicked Greenpeace out of the London Apple Expo last Thursday after telling the group (running a project called "Green My Apple") to only hand out leaflets at its own stand and to stop taking pictures of other stands.

There are two ways to spin the media frenzy over Apple head Steve Jobs trashing Microsoft's forthcoming Zune media player in a Newsweek interview. ("I've seen the demonstrations," he said about the sharing feature. "It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.")

• Yet another Apple blog prints an "exclusive" tip that Apple will release an iPhone next year, combining the iPod with a phone, confirming other blogs' reports. But TrustedReviews also says a full-screen, touchscreen iPod will come out in December, sparking a Christmas rush and the soaking of many nerds' pants. No real product photos here, though. [TrustedReviews]

It's quarterly report time in businessland, let's check the score!

The founder and chairman of semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor retired today over a stock option backdating scandal. Kenneth Levy (pictured) had been with the company for over 20 years. KLA will re-price backdated options that he and other KLA executives hold. The Wall Street Journal notes that a May article in that paper sparked the options probe.

• First, a refresher: Backdating stock options really means giving an investor stock options below the current stock price, thus making them immediately worth money (as the recipient could buy stock at the low price and immediately sell it for a profit). Companies do this by pretending the stocks were given earlier when the stock was at the lower price. It's illegal if documents are forged, the company doesn't tell shareholders, or the company doesn't properly reduce reported earnings in its financial statements or taxes. [University of Iowa]

• Thank God for Wolf Blitzer. There's no way we could get through this plane-in-a-building nightmare were it not for his soothing voice and probing questions, such as, "How could this happen just five years after 9/11?" We don't know how! Tell us, Wolf! Lead us out of the darkness and into the light of understanding! Cue sirens and/or car alarms for extra drama. [Seth Mnookin]
• YouTube fosters a special friendship between straight muscleheads and the Gay men who like to watch. [The Advocate]
• La Esquina: exclusive, quite possibly bruising. [Brain on Fire]
• As if they weren't bad enough, the RNC is now as evil as AOL. [NYSun]
• Anthony Bourdain doesn't mind if annoying bloggers take pictures of his food. [92Y]
• Jihad on the midtown Apple store? [LGF]

"Oh J r me, how shall we ever express the empty shell our lives have become?"
"We must hold a mock protest against something so banal, the world sees instantly it is but a satire on the whiny petite bourgeoisie, distracted from the true existential questions of our time."
"But what if they take us seriously?"
"Mon amie, they couldn't possibly be so stupid."