Hey, so did everybody have fun at yesterday's Apple Analyst Meeting in Cupertino? What do you mean, you didn't go? Sure, it's technically for financial analysts only, but c'mon, everybody knows that they let in anyone with a $3,000 suit and a look of smug self-satisfaction. The look takes a bit of practice, granted, but the suit is easy to get: a real analyst is easily lured into a dark alley with a skim mocha double-tall latté, at which point the only challenge is incapacitating him without getting blood on his Armani. (We find that a light tap on the back of the skull with a sock full of quarters is usually all it takes.) Ah, well; maybe next year. Too bad, too-- you missed some excellent bagels. Mmmmmmm, Cranberry Orange.

Fear not, though; sure, you may have missed the free munchies, but at least you can still get a dose of Reality Distortion Field energy by tuning in to the QuickTime streams of the event. For what it's worth, Steve only makes his appearance in the final "Q & A" stream, but everything he says there is pure gold, in terms of both attitude and content. The factoids, for example, are priceless; remember when the iTunes Music Store had a 70% market share for all legal music downloads? Well, now it's up to "over 80% market share," prompting Steve to refer to it as "the Microsoft of music stores." (Expect dozens of security holes to be found any day now.)

Of course, most people discussing Steve's sound bites are harping on the aforementioned iTMS market share news, or PowerPC versus x86 issues ("It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," says Steve, but the PowerPC roadmap looks "really good-- I can't talk about it, but it's really good"), or the first public confirmation that, right now, Apple has no plans to support Microsoft's Windows Media format in the iPod or sell non-AAC music online. And the fact that this is all that people are talking about is strange, because Steve actually let slip Apple's biggest strategic direction shift ever, and the media is barely mentioning it even in passing. We refer, of course, to iToast.

Okay, we don't know that it'll actually be called that-- it's just an educated guess. But in response to a question about whether Macs would ever incorporate television features, Steve specifically answered thusly: "We're not gonna go that direction, we're gonna integrate toasters and computers. Because we think people want toast when they're working on their computers. We can have computer control, just get it exactly how you-- we can put up pictures of toast, you pick the one that looks like what you want, and it'll come right out the side. We think it's a much better idea."

Now, faithful viewer sinjin notes that CNET did report on this startling revelation, but only to refer to it as a joke-- but we're 100% sure that Steve was telling the truth. Remember that part when Phil Schiller jumped in with the comment about doing an upsell on bagels? That was a joke. (Upselling bagels... as if.) But the rest of it was deadly serious.

See, the problem is that the media at large utterly fails to recognize when Apple is telling the truth about something in order to "hide it in plain sight." If you've been tuning in for a really long time, you might recall the top secret "Columbus" project which Steve eventually told a reporter was "anti-gravity technology-- get 300 miles per gallon." Everyone laughed and said Steve was funny, but you all remember how that so-called "joke" turned out.

Wait, it really wasn't anti-gravity technology?

It was the iMac logic board?

Oh. Well, nurtz-- then you're right, that whole "toast" thing probably was a joke. Bummer. We were really looking forward to that.

That's okay, though; the session also contained this gem, referring to customer indifference to how computers get things done, as long as they get them done: "They don't care if it's a gerbil in there running around in a cage." This one, at least, is clearly no joke. Expect an IBM announcement about a stunning breakthrough in rodential computing any day now.

Are you getting excited about Apple's big team-up with Pepsi this February? Just think of it: 100 million free iTunes Music Store downloads lurking underneath the caps of 300 million bottles of Pepsi products, yours for the taking-- as long as you're thirsty. And if you just aren't certain you're going to be able to work up a big enough thirst to get all the free songs you need, there's good news on the horizon: Apple is reportedly working on another iTMS tie-in that'll load you so full of sodium, you'll be guzzling Pepsi like it's... well, like it's Pepsi, we suppose. The best part of this deal? While working up your thirst, you'll be earning still more free downloads-- and all you need to do to take advantage of them is treat your body like utter crap!

That's right, everyone, evidently taking over Sculley's old job of selling sugared water for Pepsi wasn't enough for Steve; faithful viewer David Poves was the first to point out a New York Post article (via MacMinute) which reports that the Pepsi deal for 100 million songs was just the opening act for the real draw-- a similar arrangement with McDonald's for up to ten times more. Apparently "McDonald's plans to give away up to 1 billion songs in a marketing campaign," which, given that both Pepsi and McDonald's are reportedly "paying Apple's retail price of 99 cents per song," comes out to be a pretty hefty chunk of change.

While it's true that Apple doesn't really make much (or, so far, any) money from iTMS sales directly, the sheer visibility of mass-market behemoths like McDonald's and Pepsi endorsing the service will be worth untold riches to Apple in the currencies of visibility and mind share-- and let's be realistic, here: if Apple can't squeeze out a profit on $1.1 billion in iTMS revenue, something's two or three shades past Wrong.

But let's take a step back for a second and consider what's going on, here. Pepsi and McDonald's? Since when did Steve Jobs decide that he wanted to be a Junk Food Pimp? Especially since the guy's a vegan, which means the only things he can eat at McDonald's are the ketchup packets and the napkins. So why the sudden interest in promoting this country's further spiralling collapse into a dietary abyss from which our genes may never escape?

The answer is obvious, really: Power. Only the most naïve yokels could fail to see a nefarious plot unfolding with Steve's grubby little fingerprints all over it. Clearly he's updated his Master Plan for Global Domination, because the last time we snuck a peek at it a few years back, it didn't rely on giving the youth of this country diabetes and congestive heart problems. When you think about it, though, it's a pretty solid strategy for subjugating a race: take the able-bodied youngsters most likely to resist, encourage 'em to pack on a couple of hundred pounds apiece, and maybe even cause 'em to lose a few toes or feet to diabetes-related peripheral vascular disease. Voilà! No more resistance when the jack-booted Cupertino thugs roll through in their impeccably-styled Jon Ive uniforms. It's genius, we tell you-- evil genius.

Of course, an alliance with McDonald's in a long-term bid to take over the world has advantages beyond fostering crippling obesity in the planet's youth-- such as the corporation's great strides in genetically engineering an assortment of invincible super-soldiers. Nothing can kill the Grimace.

Say, remember all those pundits and analysts who lined up behind Roxio to agree that the iTunes Music Store's biggest threat was the return of Napster? Remember how they said that Napster's household name gave it a "monster competitive advantage" over Apple's service because it had the "biggest brand in the online music business?" Remember dire predictions of the iTMS's post-Napster collapse and an unshaven Steve Jobs resorting to selling pencils in a tin cup outside the gas station on the corner of DeAnza Boulevard and Pacifica Drive while wearing nothing but one of those barrels with the bottom cut out held on by two suspender-straps over the shoulders?

Okay, it's possible we may be imagining that last one. But how about this: do you remember when we predicted that Napster's brand awareness wouldn't much help Roxio's online service, since the way people know it is as a downloadable music service that was 1) free, 2) illegal, and 3) eventually bankrupt (and not just morally)? Since the new "Napster" isn't really Napster, people who get reeled in by the name are just going to go away feeling cheated. You know, kind of like when The Velvet Underground toured without Lou Reed.

Well, it looks like we may have been at least partially correct, since faithful viewer Darcy informs us that Apple is officially gloating: a press release announces that while the born-again Napster sold a mere 300,000 songs in its first week of Life Part II, the iTMS sold five times that many in the same period-- a whopping million and a half songs over the course of the same seven days.

Of course, even without the explicit Napster smackdown this is good news; prior to the advent of iTunes for Windows, the iTMS had been selling about 600,000 songs a week, which means that Apple more than doubled its sales rate by shipping the Windows version-- and once the Pepsi promotion launches in February (and the even bigger McDonald's one kicks in, assuming the rumors are true), iTunes will be everywhere. And we do mean everywhere. You'll be finding strands of it in your soup. Don't swallow them, though. (Seriously, they're not good for you. Partially hydrogenated something-or-other.)

The reason why we say we were "at least partially correct" is because Napster's brand apparently did help it outsell the other downloadable music services-- just not Apple's. What we find especially interesting is that if Apple's 1,500,000 songs represents "over 80 percent market share" during Napster's debut week (note that we said "if," since the SoundScan market share numbers are for "last week" and Napster's first week started last Wednesday, so this is admittedly fudging things a bit), then once you subtract out Napster's 300,000 songs, that means all of the other music services combined only sold another 75,000. That would mean that Apple sold twenty times as many songs as BuyMusic.com, MusicMatch, and whoever else out there may be peddling tunes, all lumped together.

Sheesh. Suppose Scott Blum's feeling a little stupid yet? So much for the "200 million to 300 million" songs he said he'd sell in the first year. We all knew he was a world-class grade-A dork, but for the good of the species he really should be preventing from breeding since he blew $40 million on BuyMusic's ad campaign (one mocking iTunes, no less) and the service is now probably selling, at most, no more than $80,000 worth of songs per week. Gee, that means he'll get his marketing money back in a mere ten years-- assuming, of course, that he has a 100% profit margin. (Hey, doesn't everyone?)