Hoooo mama! After chowing down on the release of the iPod Photo and the iPod U2 Special Edition at last week's big media event, the Apple world is apparently still snoozing in a post-Stevenote digestive torpor-- and as if things weren't quiet enough, everyone's been distracted by the election and then by the end of the election. The upshot is that there's so little Apple-related drama to go around that we aren't so much scraping the bottom of the barrel as we are punching straight through it and tunneling to China with the spoon. Honestly, we considered simply closing up shop for the day because there's really nothing important to say.

Of course, that's never stopped us before, so here we are, yammering on about something as earth-shattering as how Apple has disabled iTunes Music Store access from all but the latest three releases of iTunes. Oooooo. It's like they're harvesting black market organs from crippled orphans or something.

It's true, though; would we make such a serious accusation without proof? Well, yeah, of course we would, but it just so happens that CNET confirms it: as of now, only iTunes versions 4.5 and higher can access the nickel-and-dime bankruptcy machine known colloquially as the iTMS. This comes as a massive shock to anyone who 1) is still using iTunes 4.0 through 4.2 for some reason, and 2) didn't happen to notice Apple's warning about the impending change, which hassled anyone connecting to the iTMS with a soon-to-be-shut-out version of iTunes as of a couple of weeks ago.

Apple's stated intention in forcing users of older software to upgrade is to keep them in sync with new features only available in later versions, like iMix, those snazzy mosaic jewelcase inserts, and Party Shuffle (which, despite its name, is a feature that even wallflower loners like us no longer think we can live without). But since practically every release of iTunes disables the legally sketchy third party music liberation software du jour, the phrase "ulterior motive" springs readily to mind. For instance, last week's iTunes 4.7, in addition to adding iPod Photo support, iTMS Artist Alerts, and a way to find and prune duplicate songs, also just happens to kill iPodDownload, a plugin that allowed users to drag music from a connected iPod back to the iTunes Library-- a handy feature, to be sure, but also a potential way to steal music that's just a little too well-integrated with iTunes itself for Apple's comfort. So in addition to shutting down the plugin's original download site with threats of legal action, Apple decided to prevent it from working at all in iTunes 4.7.

But you know how these things go: squelch one download site and watch three more spring up, disable one version of software and watch a new one hit the servers before you can say "cheesy workaround." And indeed, according to MacMinute, iPodDownload 1.1 just popped up, offering full compatibility with iTunes 4.7-- and then popped right back down again, with the download link disappearing from Engadget in record time. (Apple's lawyers apparently possess that oh-so-enviable quality known as "cat-like reflexes.")

Not that they can actually stop anyone from obtaining and using iPodDownload if they really want to, mind you. As we've mentioned in the past, we're partial to the feature set and elegance of iPodRip, ourselves, but for anyone who's determined to use iPodDownload, a simple Google search will probably turn up a few live download links to the plugin itself, and even using the older 1.0 version with the iPodDownload-blocking iTunes 4.7 is a walk in the park for anyone with a hex editor and the mental wherewithal to change one letter in the plugin's name. You know what that means: bring on the lawyers and iTunes 4.8. Ahhh, nothing fills dead air quite like a futile game of cat and mouse...

While things are a little sleepy in the Apple world right now, the battle for the music download market rages on, with the non-market leaders still feverishly trying to catch up to Apple's huge lead. Normally we'd say that Apple deserves to take a little break; between all those new iPod models increasing long-term demand for the iTunes Music Store and the store itself extending its customer base into nine more European countries last week, what's wrong with a little snooze before the next big push? Except that there's this tortoise-and-hare fable that keeps us up at night, and since Microsoft is obviously the tortoise (it was slow out of the starting gate, and Bill Gates looks like a turtle) and a short siesta is what got the hare fired from his job at the Piggly Wiggly, well, we have a feeling that Apple should keep the coffee flowing.

You can be sure that Microsoft isn't taking any naps; as faithful viewer IrishStewSoItIs pointed out, Reuters reports that the company's MSN Music service just followed Apple straight into Europe, barely a week after the launch of the EU iTMS. In fact, MSN Music is now available in several European countries still not on the iTMS roster, such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland. Says a Microsoft spokesperson, "If you take all the new countries, we expect to overtake iTunes very soon because we will have a larger user base to tap."

Now, if that "larger user base" strategy were really such a trump card, then BuyMusic.com would currently be ruling the roost, but of course instead it died a painful and well-deserved death because a "larger user base" was all it had going for it and most of that user base ran screaming in the other direction when confronted with a terrible user interface, inconsistent pricing and usage rights, and a naked Tommy Lee as company spokesdoofus. But this is Microsoft we're talking about, here, and what it has is not so much a "larger user base" as it is a "gargantuan captive audience." Windows Media Player is "part of" Windows (cough) and Windows is freakin' everywhere. So yeah, MSN Music creeping into iTMS territory-- and beyond-- is cause for brow-furrowing and even a little concerned harrumphing. (Then again, we do take some solace in the fact that Microsoft had a music download service in Europe for years before Apple got there and never made any headway at all.)

Meanwhile, what's up with Napster? Well, basically it continues to provide the comic relief that keeps us from getting too worked up over the real threat of Microsoft. Faithful viewer Jef Van der Voort tipped us off to The Cat's latest plan to reign supreme in the music download market: according to About.com, the upcoming "Napster To Go" service will allow customers to download songs wirelessly straight to their cell phones-- you know, kind of how we wanted iTunes to work with Motorola phones, as opposed to the inexplicable "buy and download on your computer and then transfer to your cell phone" paradigm that Apple and Motorola seem to be embracing. But there's a catch. Or two. Maybe ten. We lost count.

First of all, the service costs $14.95 a month, and apparently that's just for the Napster To Go service and doesn't include a regular subscription too. And it is a subscription, which has the benefit of letting you download as many songs as you want, but the usual gotcha applies: you lose all your downloaded music the second you stop forking out the monthly subscription fee. But that's okay, because you won't be losing much; while it presumably works with a ton of WMA-based iPod wannabes, the service is only compatible with a single phone so far, the Audiovox SMT5600-- which "comes with 28.5 MB of internal flash memory which can hold up to 6 songs." Oh baby baby. Of course, if you want to carry around more tunes than that, you can always spring for a miniSD expansion card, which tops out at 256 MB. Buy sixteen of 'em and you've got the storage capacity of an iPod mini!

So, no, we're not terribly worried about Napster right now. But Microsoft, that's another story; we just know those guys are going to get MSN Music into Malta before the iTMS gets there. And you know what they say: the music download service that rules Malta rules the world.

You know, we missed out on that whole "flash mob" phenomenon; heck, if it hadn't been featured in Doonesbury as a Dean campaign tactic and used as a plot device on CSI: Miami, we might have remained blissfully ignorant straight to the grave. Not that we actually would participate in anything vaguely sociable, mind you, especially if it meant we'd have to leave the AtAT compound and our radiation-shielded stockpile of canned beets and creamed corn. Still, part of us regrets never having participated in the faux-random chaos of assembling in a grocery store with a couple hundred total strangers and throwing sugar packets at the deli guy.

But if there was no chance we'd ever go in for the flash mob thing, you can totally forget about ever getting us near a gaggle of Mobile Clubbers. Faithful viewer Ephraim forwarded us an article at The Register whose only real relevance to Apple is its title: "iPod-crazed youths invade London station." In reality, though this practice might loosely be classified as another iPod-related social aberration like the previously reported swapping of iPod headphone jacks, in this case the iPods themselves are incidental; apparently the hip thing in London is for people to show up at some prearranged location flash mob-style and just start dancing to whatever's pumping through their headphones, whether it be iPod-generated or not.

In other words, you wind up with a bunch of people turning a subway platform into a mass of gyrating flesh straight out of the city's hottest nightclub, only everyone's listening to his or her own music and confused bystanders don't hear anything at all. Think "iPod silhouette ad" times ten with the sound turned off, the contrast turned down, and the background filled in with an incongruous scene like the waiting room at your doctor's office. The fact that each participant is isolated from the rest by dancing to a different song sounds like it should be some sort of metaphor for the breakdown of interpersonal communication and shared experience in modern society, but we're way too long out of college to think about it. If anyone uses it for a thesis, though, we want credit.

There's no indication that this fad has made its way across the pond yet, but somehow we suspect it's only a matter of time. So if those of you in larger metropolitan areas suddenly happen upon a couple of dozen people all writhing to different rhythms in a conspicuous public place, don't panic; if you can spot white earbuds on at least six or eight of them, it's probably just a Mobile Club and you can go merrily on your way. If none of them seems to be listening to music, though, you might want to call in the Centers for Disease Control so they can send a couple of operatives in biohazard suits to determine what's causing the mass seizures. And don't forget to cover your mouth.