Hey, everybody, it's time to check in once again with the official iTunes Music Store download count-- at least, Apple says it is, and who are we to argue? The last time we heard any official sort of tally was back in mid-December, when Apple revealed that it had sold 25 million songs, at a then-current rate of "almost 1.5 million songs per week." Well, the snowball just keeps getting bigger and crushing more idyllic mountainside villages, because today's press release reveals that the iTMS recently sold its 50 millionth song ("The Path of Thorns" by Sarah McLachlan-- gee, suppose they'd have told us which song it was if it had been, say, "Suck My Left One" by Bikini Kill? Just wondering) and the download rate is now a whopping 2.5 million songs per week. That comes out to 130 million songs per year, assuming the traffic holds steady-- and all indications so far are that it's increasing.

As per union regulations, the press release includes a Nifty Executive Quote™, and we're lucky enough that this time around it comes from none other than Steve Jobs: "With over 50 million songs already downloaded and an additional 2.5 million songs being downloaded every week, it's increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes." Translation: "Hey, Napster: we're holding up a finger right now. Guess which one?"

And yet, certain factions of the press are somehow interpreting this news as some sort of admission of failure; faithful viewer Julian Clark tipped us off to a BBC NEWS article whose spin on the press release is "Apple misses music sales target," noting that 50 million songs is nowhere near the 100 million Steve Jobs wanted to sell in the iTMS's first year. There are couple of things wrong with the Beeb's reporting, though; first of all, Apple hasn't missed anything yet, since, as the BBC readily admits, Steve's 100 million goal has a target date of April 28th. Not that we expect Apple to sell another 50 million songs in the next six weeks, of course, but it still seems a little early to announce that Apple has already missed its target, unless the byline on that article credits "Doctor Who."

Of course, it's the second point we need to make that really casts the BBC NEWS report in a crappy light: Apple's reported 50 million songs sold is "not including songs redeemed from the currently-running Pepsi iTunes promotion," and the original 100 million song goal did include Pepsi downloads. Indeed, the promotion was even introduced specifically as a way for Apple to reach that goal. Check it out, the QuickTime version of the Music Event is still online; scrub to 44:33 to hear Steve say "We want to sell 100 million songs by April 28th, 2004. That's a really high bar. How in the heck are we gonna do it? Well, we got a few ideas. First of all, our Mac customers are going to purchase about 30 million songs the first year. We're almost halfway there, we're running at an over 30 million song a year rate right now, we're pretty confident of this. The next thing we're doing, though, is we're taking it to Windows. Right? This is a very large market, we've got the best product out there by far, this is gonna help a lot. But what if that's not enough? What else should we do?"

Nothing too damning yet, right? But that just sets the stage. Scrub forward to 50:12 (unless you want to listen to all the stuff about the AOL tie-in, of course) to hear him talk about the Pepsi promo; you'll hear him say this: "So, going to Windows, 25 million AOL users, making it really easy for them, but what if that still doesn't get us to 100 million songs? What are we gonna do? Well, we're gonna do a third thing. We're gonna give away 100 million songs. You heard me right. And to do this, we are partnering with Pepsi. It's really cool." So there you have it, folks: BBC NEWS was wrong, wrong, wrong-- and frankly, we kind of resent being forced into our totally unsupported Investigative Journalism mode to prove it. (Every time we do that we wind up with a headache and a painful burning sensation.)

Now that that's all out in the open, assuming that iTMS sales proceed at current levels and 35% of the winning iTunes bottlecaps are redeemed (sounds pretty likely with all the tilters out there-- go get 'em, folks!), Apple shouldn't have much trouble clearing that "really high bar." Oh, but since we are in Investigative Journalism mode, we get to do that cool newsanchor thing and say "And this just in": an anonymous faithful viewer now informs us that CNET screwed up on this, too-- and MacDailyNews did the same legwork we did to prove them wrong. Oh, terrific. So now we've got a migraine and, um... "micturition troubles" for nothing? Remind us to leave the digging to the real journalists next time. We're just not built for this sort of thing.

Uh-oh, now the rumor mill's in trouble. You know how things have been kinda slow lately with the Apple-flavored drama, yeah? And how most rumors sites have been filling space with blow-by-blow accounts of every single new build of Mac OS X 10.3.3? You know what we mean-- "Build 7F32 was recently seeded to developers, with no documented changes since 7F31, which means 10.3.3 will likely be released soon." "Insiders note that build 7F33, which is not a developer seed, has no documented changes from 7F32, but is 2 KB larger, leading to speculation about as-yet-undiscovered changes to the text in Finder Help." "Inside sources report that internal build 7F34 is identical to 7F33 except for a slightly different light bulb icon for the Energy Saver panel of System Preferences." "Build 7F35 restores the Energy Saver icon from build 7F33." And so on.

Well, that particular gravy train o' filler material has just now left the station, because as faithful viewer badtzmat was first to report, 10.3.3 has started popping up in Software Update panels from here to Dedham-- and since Dedham is only about twenty miles south of here, we suspect it may be surfacing in places even farther away. If you're a fan of the chubby updaters, you'll be pleased to note that 10.3.3 weighs in at a zaftig 67 MB, which means there just has to be a ton of enthralling new features and critical bug fixes, right? You got it Sparky; how's default-to-on AppleTalk browsing grab ya? Or improved compatibility with the Honda AH-G10 network card? Or even-- and this is a biggie, so make sure you're sitting down-- the default pulsing button in Open... dialogs now saying "Choose" instead of "Open"? To quote the immortal Fred Sanford, "It's the big one, Elizabeth! I'm comin' to join ya, honey!"

But wait, there's more! For example, 10.3.3 fixes that bug that could grant a user admin-level privileges if an admin logged out before his 5-minute authentication window had closed. It fixes some "unexpectedly quit" issues with Mail and Address Book. It lets Image Capture import files "whose names begin with an underscore character." It "improves Fan Control system function for Power Mac G5 computers" (though we've already heard from one viewer who says it made the fan control worse on his PowerBook G4). All of which makes for a point-release update so frightfully dull we're somewhat baffled as to why anyone might have been so interested in the build-to-build minutiae of this thing in the first place.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, at least from a software release standpoint; this is a point release, after all, and they're not supposed to be exciting. In the best case scenario, you wouldn't notice any difference between the Before and After shots, because with luck you were never suffering from any 10.3.2 bugs in the first place-- or if you were, they were so minor you can't even tell they were fixed. Still, though, from our perspective, we need that drama, and it looks like we're plumb out of luck.

About the most commotion we can hope for is that this 67 MB Sack of Bland™ causes more interesting problems than it fixes. As usual, we're holding off on applying the update until the rest of you lemmings early adopters test the waters, and while we don't wish you any specific harm, we have to say, widespread reports of 10.3.3 causing irretrievable data loss, permanent damage to FireWire circuitry, or chronic cirrhosis of the earlobes would at least give us a scene or two's worth of material. We're just saying, is all.

By the way, the release version is build 7F44. We know you were on the edge of your seat about that.

Sorry, folks; the dream is over. You will surely recall that Apple won't be attending Macworld Expo Boston this July, and with Steve a no-show for the keynote slot, that leaves some pretty big New Balances to fill. Back in January, we, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff, offhandedly volunteered to pick up Steve's slack. This was widely misinterpreted as an offer to pick up Steve's slacks, which may have led to our having to take an embarrassing and expensive cross-country trip to a Cupertino dry cleaner's if not for the happy circumstance that Steve mostly wears jeans. A few people, however, not only understood our offer, but also wanted to take us up on it. Sadly (or happily, depending on your perspective and tolerance for pain), none of those people was an IDG executive-- or someone with dirt on an IDG executive-- who could get us hired for the gig.

And thus was born what has been referred to in furtive whispers as the "Jacknote petition," an online initiative started by a faithful viewer who intended to collect electronic signatures from the unsuspecting masses in a misguided (but darn thoughtful) attempt to get one of us up on stage that July morning. At last check there were signatures of 1,227 similarly misguided (but darn nice) individuals amassed in a fairly impressive wad of support for a keynote that, assuming the summer Expo survives Apple's absence in the first place, would surely end the show in a cataclysmic fireball of oblivion for all eternity in all infinite parallel universes ever ever ever.

But fear not, gentle souls, for faithful viewer Michael Yee informs us that IDG has issued a press release announcing the fate of the keynote-- or, as it is now apparently called, the "feature presentation." Because instead of a traditional guy-in-a-turtleneck-talking-at-you sort of thingy, the presentation will be a panel discussion-- otherwise known as several-guys-not-necessarily-in-turtlenecks-talking-at-you. About what, you ask? Well, since Apple couldn't muster up much in the way of a 20th birthday for the Mac, IDG decided to do it instead: Expo attendees will get to see "The Macintosh at 20-- A Celebration of 20 Years of Innovation." David Pogue will be hosting, and the panel will consist of members of the original Mac design team (such as Jef "Yes, One F" Raskin, Andy "Feld, Not Field" Hertzfeld, and Bill "No Clarifying Nickname" Atkinson) spinning anecdotes about the good ol' days and offering perspectives on what a long, strange trip it's been.

Interesting? Probably. A worthy replacement for the traditional Stevenote? Eh. Maybe. We, at least, are looking forward to it.

So are we bitter about not scoring the gig? Nah-- as far as we're concerned, the less public speaking we attempt, the better for everyone within earshot. However, we are a little surprised about the outcome of this whole thing. As far as we can tell, this marks the first time in the history of the Internet that an online petition has failed to effect its intended change. Somebody alert a panel of experts; there's grant money in this, somewhere...