Aiiiieeeeee, it burns! IT BURNS!!! After months 'n' months 'n' months of speculation that Apple was due to ship speed-bumped Power Mac G5s "any day now," we'd finally spent the weekend coming to grips with the fact that the possibility of a "March 26-ish" intro wasn't looking good. That date, you probably recall, was based largely on several Apple promotions-- both in the U.S. and abroad-- that appeared to be Power Mac inventory-clearing attempts and which all expired on the 26th or 27th of this month. But recently we've heard a bunch of murmurs that Apple isn't planning to unveil any new hardware until April, and so we finally came to terms with what we thought was a respectably conservative time frame for the new models' introduction-- namely, the "at or around NAB" date that's been tossed around the rumor mill lately.

And then Apple pulled a move that is the rumorological equivalent of pouring a mug of boiling TABASCO sauce in someone's crotch.

Prepare to wince, folks, because faithful viewer Oded Helman was the first to inform us that Apple has just launched another promotion: Brilliant Savings, which offers customers a $500 rebate if they purchase any Power Mac G5 together with a 23-inch Cinema HD Display. That is actually one sweet deal, and it's one we'd be tempted to take ourselves if 1) we could somehow convince ourselves that no one can survive with dual 800 MHz G4s and 22 inches anymore, 2) we could bear the clashing of the aluminum G5 with the retro clear-plastic-'n'-pinstripes of the display, and 3) we had a few grand sitting around collecting dust (all our assets are tied up in Florida land deals and pyramid schemes). Oh, and also if 4) we didn't know there are faster G5s and aluminum-clad displays just around the corner.

Although, you know what, we might be able to take care of that last point with no real trouble, because have you checked the dates on that new promo? The freakin' thing lasts until June 26th. And since Apple's fiscal quarter just ended, it's not trying to squeeze a few more Power Mac sales in at the last second; this promotion sure seems to be an inventory-reducing move, aiming to flush the channel before Apple starts shipping new Power Macs and displays. But June 26th? Can we seriously be expected to believe to that Apple doesn't plan to ship new G5s and displays for another three months? Because, you know, we'll have to take a cheese grater to our scalps or something if that's really what this means.

The more we think about it, the more possible-- and depressing-- it sounds. For one thing, there was that rumor just a few days ago that Power Macs might be delayed until "as far off as June or even July." And then there's the fact that June 26th is just two days before the start of WWDC, which, in recent years, has taken the place of the summer Macworld Expo as the event at which Apple likes to show off all its latest goodies. At last year's WWDC, Steve unveiled the original G5s-- and promised a boost to 3 GHz "within twelve months." So maybe Apple's skipping the whole interim 2.5ish GHz system and instead looking to jump straight to 3.0 GHz at WWDC exactly one year later.

And really, is that so depressing? Sure, it would mean that Power Mac sales would stay at their currently disappointing levels for a whole 'nother quarter, but if Apple did ship a 2.5ish GHz speed bump now, what are the odds that it'd really ship another revision just three short months later? In one sense, introducing new Power Macs now would almost be an admission that the "3 GHz shipping in 12 months" thing isn't gonna happen. So we can stand the idea of no new Power Macs until the end of June (ouchful though it may be), as long at those June Power Macs are the real 3.0 GHz deal. Fingers crossed.

Say, you know what we haven't done in a good long while? Bashed the dickens out of iTunes Music Store competitor BuyMusic.com. And really, we miss doing it, partly because the service was universally panned as the faintest shadow of the iTMS, partly because founder Scott Blum was actually clueless enough to think he was going sell a million songs a day, and mostly because BuyMusic's whole ad campaign consisted of three things: direct ripoffs of Apple's commercials; commercials that actually attacked the iTMS; and naked Tommy Lee. Ewwwwwww.

(If you want a newer reason, there's the fact-- as reported by the PowerPage-- that BuyMusic still claims to be the "World's Largest Download Music Store" despite reporting a catalog of 400,000 songs, versus Apple's 500,000.)

Of course, the reason why our BuyMusic bashing rate dropped from once-per-day to, well, nil is because the service made headlines for about a week and then practically disappeared. The last we'd heard about them was back in December, when Scott Blum admitted that his sales were "nowhere near [Apple's] numbers." (At the time, Apple's numbers amounted to 1.5 million per week. So much for a million a day, huh, Scott?) But we can get a few more digs in now, because BuyMusic is back in the news-- sort of. Faithful viewer Chris alerted us to a post by someone at SpyMac reporting that BuyMusic has emailed former customers to inform them that the service will soon be "integrated" into the Buy.com parent site. What that means, of course, is that pretty soon BuyMusic.com will cease to exist.

Now, before everyone does a happy dance on BuyMusic's grave, we think it's important to stress that, as of yet, that grave's still empty; BuyMusic.com isn't being shut down, but rather absorbed into the overall Buy.com experience. But that certainly implies that, $40 million ad campaign and naked Tommy Lee aside, the whole BuyMusic.com branding attempt was a dismal failure; either Blum thinks he can sell more songs as impulse buys to people already shopping for random junk at Buy.com (we know he certainly couldn't attract buyers who were actually looking for music), or this absorption is just the first step in a controlled collapse. There are about a zillion opinions on the subject over at Slashdot, if you're so inclined.

So is this the beginning of the music download shakeout? We think it probably is, and it's been coming for a while. Everybody knows that Apple sells a ton more songs than all the other services combined, and still just barely breaks even; it only keeps the iTMS running to sell more iPods. And if BuyMusic was "nowhere near" Apple's sales and Apple only recently passed the 50 million-song mark, it seems highly unlikely that BuyMusic has even recouped the $40 million wad it blew on its initial advertising, so we figure it's being absorbed for an eventual shutdown.

So who's next? Napster? MusicMatch? MyCokeMusic.com? Actually, at broadcast time, the MyCokeMusic server was unreachable; are they dropping like flies already? "Attention, all non-iTMS music download services: please line up against that bloodstained wall..."

It's not like we couldn't see it coming, of course, but even though we noted multiple times that we understood the whole idea was sick, Friday's scene about the coffin of a Microsoft executive rubbed some viewers the wrong way; apparently some people just don't find coffins appropriate subject matter, no matter who's going to wind up inside them-- which is a little strange, since we all are, eventually. (Well, except people who opt for cremation, cryonic storage, or our own personal favorite: freeze-drying.)

Some people apparently got the idea that we were somehow advocating the assassination of Microsoft employees because we linked to a coffin. Since this whole thing is apparently a highly divisive subject, we're not going to name names. But while a small but vocal minority felt we had gone way too far (yeesh, no one tell them about Nothing So Strange or they'll all have freakin' aneurysms), several people chastised us for not going quite far enough. One person in particular felt that what the scene really needed was a detailed artist's conception of the deceased Microsoft exec lying in the coffin.

We've since turned his IP address over to the authorities, who assure us that soon we can all feel safer walking the streets at night.

As for the little matter of which Bellevue-residing Microsoft exec might have commissioned the casket, we noted on Friday that it couldn't be Bill Gates-- but faithful viewer Paul Frankenstein noted that while Gates lives in Medina, Steve "Missing Link" Ballmer does live in Bellevue. So is it his? We have no idea. But it's possible, and that's enough for some people. Still, we need to be very clear about this: we do not wish death upon any Microsoft employee, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Heck, especially Ballmer; the guy's brought us so much plot fodder over the years, he's practically an honorary Steve. (Well, okay, yes, technically he is a "Steve," but you know what we mean.) Frankly, we don't know how we'd cope without his occasional public outbursts. For example, faithful viewer The Professor dished us a CNET article that notes a recent Ballmerian appearance at Microsoft's "fifth annual advertising conference," where, "like an eager football coach pumping up the team for the second half, Ballmer reasserted that Microsoft is still in the game and plans to win." And here, ladies and germs, is the sort of quote we just live for: "'You'll see a lot of good competition in the area,' [Ballmer] said emphatically, at one point throwing his pen."

Throwing his pen. This is how the man makes his point. We love this guy!

So, to recap, no, we don't want anyone dead, least of all pen-throwing Ballmer. But that doesn't mean looking at a Microsoft coffin doesn't fill us with a sense of inner peace we hadn't felt since before we tried to run Word 6.0 on a Performa 630. And if that's wrong, we'll, we don't want to be right.