Okay, we figure it's still way too soon to decide for sure whether or not the iTunes Music Store is a hit, but the early stats sure seem to indicate that it's heading to number one with a bullet. According to Billboard, Apple's new music service spat out some 275,000 tracks in its first 18 hours online. And we're not talking 30-second free previews, people; at 99 cents per song, that there represents something like $272,000 racked up in three-quarters of a day. Sounds like an awful lot, doesn't it?

Well, don't get too excited just yet; we're a little ashamed to admit it, but we here at AtAT may have inadvertently inflated those sales numbers just a wee bit beyond "normal" levels. Basically, we got so excited about the whole instant gratification thing that when we were browsing around through the iTunes Music Store earlier this week, we sort of bought, um, one of everything. Sorry about that. But if it makes you feel any better, we are just going to feel awful when the Visa bill shows up.

Regardless, the early numbers definitely indicate that people (well, Mac users, at least) are perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price to download high-quality music as long as it's got relatively lax restrictions on what they can do with it. And don't forget that the current universe of potential iTunes Music Store customers is pretty darn tiny. Mac users are a minuscule subset of the total pool of computer users (albeit the smart, charming, and good-looking subset), and the number of Mac users in the U.S. (iTMS is U.S.-only so far) running Mac OS X 10.1.5 or higher (required for iTunes 4) is even smaller still. It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to figure out what's likely to happen when Apple introduces the service outside U.S. borders and to all those poor slobs out there running Windows.

Aw, heck, it's Friday; let's do a teensy bit of math just for giggles. Figure first of all that the iTunes Music Store was maybe ten times more active at its launch than it will be on an average day once the hype starts to die down. That's 27,500 songs sold in 18 hours, or 36,667 a day, just among Mac users. Now, let's conservatively estimate that Windows support will increase Apple's customer base, say, eightfold, and international support will double it. That comes out to roughly 586,000 songs sold per day, even ignoring any boost that might come as Apple extends the store's catalog beyond the stuff offered by the major labels. Word on the street is that Apple gets about 35 cents per song it sells; even after siphoning off bandwidth and support costs, we're talking about probably at least a cool million bucks in pure profit for Apple each and every week. Yowza!

All of which will come in handy if we can persuade the company to help us pay that Visa bill. Say, can we maybe sue because iTMS makes impulse buys too easy?...

Remember that exclusive FORTUNE article about Apple's new musical endeavors? As far as we know, that was the first reliable news outlet to report that Apple's promised Windows support for the iTunes Music Store would actually be a full-fledged Windows port of iTunes. And now that the development of iTunes for Windows has been confirmed by Apple itself in a job posting, suddenly something else mentioned in that article starts looking a little more credible.

To wit, we're talking about the possibility of iTMS being integrated with AOL-- a prospect which initially sounded just plain goofy to us, but one we need to reconsider now that FORTUNE's shown that it really has done its homework. The situation, as far as we can make out, is that AOL was in the process of developing its own online music store, but whatever they've got so far can't even bill customers for individual song purchases yet. If AOL can cut a deal with Apple to use iTMS instead, then Apple may just wind up getting its new venture in front of 26 million AOL subscribers. We believe the technical term is "ka-ching!"

Now, we did a little homework ourselves, and it turns out that AOL is the one hesitating on this deal, not Apple. Sources close to AOL bigwigs report that said bigwigs are concerned that the iTunes Music Store is "severely lacking in the suckiness department." Apparently the company strives to maintain a uniform level of suckage, and there's a fair amount of concern that if its customers experience any aspect of AOL-related software or service that falls below a certain prescribed minimum crappiness rating, they'll become bewildered and disoriented and go wander in front of a speeding bus or something.

The good news, however, is that Apple and AOL are close to a inking a deal that would send a cadre of AOL Suckiness Engineers to One Infinite Loop to assist Apple's developers in ensuring that the AOL version of iTMS meets that company's stringent criteria for suckosity. As part of the agreement, the AOL employees would also help Apple in the development of the standalone Windows version of iTunes, which, according to Crazy Apple Rumors, will be "required to suck 43.5% more than the Macintosh version" in order to stick to Windows interface guidelines.

Frankly, Apple could use the help; Steve promised the Windows version by the end of the year, which is less than eight months away, and Apple hasn't had much experience making products suck since the end of the Amelio era. (Word has it that Apple's engineers are intently studying a Power Mac 4400 in order to get up to speed.)

You know, about six months ago, an AtAT field operative inconspicuously disguised as Blackbeard the Pirate snuck into Apple's Top Secret Underground Laboratory / Bowling Alley and managed to take some extremely covert and exciting video footage, despite his hook hand. This footage finally confirmed an age-old but outlandish Apple rumor as being 100% true: Phil Schiller does bowl lefty.

So floored were we to witness definitive evidence that Phil is a southpaw that we barely gave a second thought to the dozen or so engineers in white lab coats milling busily around a largish satellite in the background of the shot; said satellite was perhaps fifteen feet on a side, looked maybe, oh, six months away from reaching a launchable state, and bore a large label with the caption "'MAKE EVERYBODY TALK ABOUT NOTHING EXCEPT FOR APPLE MUSIC-RELATED PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR A WEEK' SATELLITE." "Gee," we idly thought to ourselves at the time, "what do you suppose that thing does?"

Well, now we know.

One of the latest pundits to be affected by mind-altering rays from space is Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, whose latest column talks up the third-generation iPods which officially go on sale tonight at 6 PM (and which, an anonymous faithful viewer tells us, Best Buy has apparently been blithely selling anyway for the past day and a half or so-- oopsie!). For the most part, Walt's pretty darn enthused about the new models and how they're lighter, thinner, higher-capacity, and easier to use than ever. But he raises one important drawback of the latest and greatest: battery life.

Yup, it's sad but true; in order to make those 'Pods smaller and lighter, Apple apparently had to rip out a chunk of the battery, and the result is that the new models are rated at 8 hours of play time, versus 10 hours for the previous units. Apple claims that "the new batteries still will last for a full day of typical use," but that's cold comfort for those millions of atypical users suffering from Barstow's Malady who require ten hours of uninterrupted music at a time each day to keep their skulls from softening into a spongelike substance and eventually dissolving completely, leaving the afflicted sufferer's head little more than a skin-bag with a brain in it.

Our same AtAT field operative, this time cleverly disguised as Cesar Romero's portrayal of the Joker (yes, the guy even grew a mustache just so he could refuse to shave it off and then try to cover it with white makeup-- our operatives are that dedicated), thusly managed to walk into an Apple board meeting unchallenged. He reports that, despite the company's knowledge that Barstow's Malady is an entirely fictional disease that we just made up about thirty seconds ago, Apple isn't taking any chances on a boycott by the equally fictional Barstow's Malady International Support Group, and therefore has a new, longer-life iPod in the works and slated for release by the end of this month. This groundbreaking new model reportedly boasts a solid week's worth of continuous play on a single charge, although it is slightly larger and heavier than any other previous or current iPod design, inasmuch as it's basically a third-generation iPod duct-taped to a car battery.

"But AtAT," we hear you asking, "what on earth does any of this iPod battery nonsense have to do with the earth-shattering revelation that Phil Schiller is a closet lefty?" Honestly? Nothing at all, folks. Mostly we're just looking for ways to convince ourselves that our original 5 GB iPods are at least somehow superior to the new models, because we can't afford to trade up right now. Pathetic, sure, but hey, it gets us through the night.