Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bill? Well, if Apple isn't, technically it probably should be; despite Apple's unthinkably huge head start with GUIs and ease of use a couple of decades back, the OS That Gates Built now has something like thirty times the Mac's market share and wields monopoly power with the subtlety of a bull elephant playing the bagpipes. Many armchair CEOs agree that if Apple had just been open to licensing its operating system way back when, it'd be the Mac OS with 90+% of the market today. Instead, it chose to go it alone, and eventually got whomped by cheapo clones carrying Microsoft licenses.

Now, we've always found that argument a little specious, actually, since if the Mac OS had shipped on a gazillion cheap no-name clones, the odds are pretty good that many of the same headaches and compatibility nightmares that have always plagued the Wintel side of the fence would have afflicted the Mac OS platform, as well-- and if you've ever owned a cheap Mac clone from the Amelio era, you probably understand all too well when we say that a Mac clone isn't a Mac. It's Apple's tight control over and integration between its hardware and software that leads to such a special computing experience for the customer, and sometimes we really have to think hard about whether we'd push the Alternate Reality button and trade in Apple current sitch for a ton of market share but a Mac experience that couldn't possibly compare to what we enjoy today.

That said, part of it's true: Apple almost collapsed completely in the mid-nineties in part because it couldn't compete with the cheap "good enough" Wintel clones that were ubiquitous to the point of showing up as a prize in your morning bowl of Fruity Pebbles-- and now the New York Post thinks that history is going to repeat itself with online music download services. The iTunes Music Store may be numero uno right now, and "competition" like BuyMusic.com and Napster may not be much of a threat, but reportedly Microsoft just shook hands with a company called Loudeye, and the upshot will be that anyone who wants an online music download service can get one from Loudeye/Microsoft for cheap. And guess whose media format Fred's Music Service will therefore be using?

The parallel to the Mac-vs.-Windows thing is pretty striking; the iTMS is the best service, the iPod is the best product, but when it comes to downloadable music each only works with the other-- no other portable device supports Apple's digital rights management scheme. Meanwhile, most players support Microsoft's WMA format, and that's what most download services sell. Just as anyone can get a WMA-based online music store, anyone can build a player that supports WMA because Microsoft is plenty happy to license it out. So the Post is setting this up like a classical Greek tragedy or something, with Apple doomed to suffer the same fate over and over again because it's genetically and/or cosmically compelled to ship the first, best, and proprietary solution that eventually gets steamrolled by a horde of mediocre copycats based on a widely-licensed competing technology. It doesn't exactly rank up there with killing your pop, getting frisky with your mom, and finally popping your eyeballs in despair, but hey, what does?

When it comes to business decisions, of course, we just haven't a clue, so we dive in back and let the pros take the wheel. We just hope that Steve knows what he's doing, because when he tells USA Today flat-out that the iTMS will only ever support the iPod, that he's completely unconcerned about giants like Walmart entering the fray, and that he's not planning any price reductions or big changes when Microsoft and Sony launch competing services, there's a faint whiff of hamartia in the air. Or maybe Steve's 110% correct and that smell is actually Right Guard. We'll know if the iPod is still king in a couple of years and Steve is still fresh, dry, and smelling sporty.

Speaking of keeping the iPod on top of the market share heap, you know those rumors that surface every once in a while about the next iPod getting a color screen and being able to show photos and even video clips? It's sort of a nice thought, and totally doable; other companies are shipping stuff like this already, albeit in devices that aren't nearly as slick as the iPod. In Apple's hands, we'd expect all sorts of nice stuff like automatic syncing of albums in iPhoto, .Mac integration so your could carry your posted slideshows with you, some sort of system that automatically transfers power from the wheels that slip to the wheels that grip, etc. The only problem is that Steve Jobs already came right out and stated for the record that, since no one wants to watch a movie on a screen the size of a teabag, Apple wouldn't bother with such a device until really good folding displays come on the market, so it's not likely to happen for a while.

Or is it? Forget Steve's comments about the screen for a second and check out The Register, which cites an EE Times article about PortalPlayer's new architecture. PortalPlayer, you are no doubt aware, is the company who makes the "chip/firmware combo" that actually lets an iPod be an iPod-- and its latest release is called PortalPlayer Photo Edition. It lets you look at JPEGs on the go, syncs them with a host computer or with other players, and even lets you handle basic editing tasks like "rotating, cropping, and red-eye correction" in the field without having to plug into a computer running iPhoto. Sounds like a pretty nifty feature set to find its way into a future iPod, right? After all, Apple had no qualms about adding in such random stuff as calendar support and Solitaire, and the iPod already lets you store photos, even in the field. So why not go all Digital Hubby with iPhoto-To-Go, now?

Oh, right-- the "folding screen" thing. Well, it just so happens that PortalPlayer Photo Edition supports TV output in addition to built-in color LCDs. Looking at photos or watching movies on a 2-inch LCD may be the pits, but even Steve would have to agree that seeing them on a television works out pretty darn well-- otherwise most digital cameras wouldn't come with video-out ports. (We've had our camera for over two years and only found out that it plugs into a TV about a week and a half ago. Go figure.) So, no folding screen necessary. Heck, if nothing else, we'd love for the iPod to get a video port just so we could run Visuals on a handy TV. How can anybody expect us to get anything out of VocabuLearn: Swahili, Level 1 if we can't watch trippy purple blobs eat each other while we listen?

We know, we know-- now that IBM is getting jiggy with the G5, you'd just as soon never hear the name "Motorola" again. You'd rather just pretend that whole phase of the Mac's history never really happened and that the whole "wait a year, get another 50 MHz" cycle was merely one of Pamela Ewing's extended nightmares. But like it or not, Motorola is still a big part of Apple's business; G4s still currently power iMacs, eMacs, iBooks, and PowerBooks, so basically, if it's not a G5 or an iPod, there's a Motorola chip in it. (Yes, even the displays, smart guy. Heck, even Final Cut Pro comes with three or four G4s rattling around loose in the box.) And unless those rumors of Apple looking to switch to an IBM G3 with Altivec grafted on turn out to be true, it could be a good long while before Motorola skulks off to go make camera phones and we can finally put the whole sorry story to bed.

Which is why we should at least try to be interested in the fact that Motorola has finally settled on a replacement for "departing" CEO Chris Galvin. According to a company press release, the lucky guy to take over the hot seat is one Ed Zander, formerly the president and COO of Sun. He's a heavy-hitter, so we're told, and he talks it, too: his goal at Motorola is "to establish [it] as the definitive industry force for today as well as the next global generation." Psst, Ed-- we've been watching the Motorola saga for a while, now, so we're going to go out on a limb and tell you that step one on the path to that goal is probably not to issue another 30,000 pink slips. Just a tip from the peanut gallery.

Anyway, Zander has our best wishes and sincere hopes that he can somehow restore Motorola to its glory of old (whatever that must have been), or, at the very, very least, ensure that Apple doesn't wind up with product shortages because Motorola left a shipment of G4s in the back of a friend's van the night before the guy drove to Mexico. It's a tall order, especially for a guy who lost an eye when a misogynistic preacher with superhuman strength gouged it out in the service of ultimate evil.

Okay, so that was a lot of setup for one cheap Buffy joke, but c'mon, cut us a little slack, here-- the opportunities are a lot rarer these days, and we have to take what we can.