Things are pretty quiet in Macville right now; after the recent crude file-deleting Word 2004 Trojan scare, most of what little drama is floating around out there seems to be centered on people wondering if every file they download will turn out to be something malicious with a fake icon and filename slapped on it. Personally, we have a feeling that if more exciting things were going on right now, fewer people would bother getting freaked out by the whole thing, since it was both artless and fairly limited in terms of casualty count. (Did anybody other than that one guy get nuked by it?) That said, we did just get bitten by a similar assault ourselves; we downloaded a file whose name and icon suggested that it was a leaked early beta version of The Sims™ Doin' Taxes, but which, to our horror, turned out to be Word 6.0 launching in Classic. AIIIEEEEEEEEE!!

Needless to say, we doubt we shall ever recover.

And yet we must press on, so how about we check in with the latest dirt on the prospects of the iTunes Music Store finally punching its way through U.S. borders to bring the promise of cheap 'n' legal music downloads to some of the non-yank masses? Apple's latest official word on the subject is that the European version of the store should be coming sometime "this year," but French site MacPlus claims to have a source with a slightly less vague target date. As far as we can make out from the Babelfish autotranslation (our French isn't nearly as atrocious as our German, but it's still basically limited to such tasks as, say, understanding most of an Eddie Izzard encore without peeking at a transcript), sources close to the major labels claim that Euro-iTMS "should be open towards mid-June, not only in France, but in several European countries," and in any case "before October" so as to beat the competition to market.

As for pricing, well, the news on that front is perhaps a little less cheery: "the price of the pieces was fixed at 1,29€," which is 1.29 euros with our more familiar use of the decimal point as opposed to the swanky French decimal comma. That works out to roughly a buck fifty-two in good ol' U.S. green-'n'-wrinklies, which is significantly more expensive than our own accustomed 99-cent downloads. From what we can make out, the higher price comes from stiffer licensing fees from the labels (0,80€, or 94 cents) and a scary 19.6% tax rate. Figure in Apple's costs to keep the store running and when all's said and done, it doesn't sound like the company's exactly going to get rich off the higher price. Well, especially if everyone in Europe decides that it's too high to pay in the first place, but even if they do line up with frothing mouths and open wallets, it sounds like the iTMS will continue to be a slightly-better-than-break-even prospect for some time to come.

Oh, and there's one more semi-startling bit of recon in this rumour: "less immediately obvious, the shop on line would also position on the lucrative market of the ringings of telephone." In other (slightly less-baffling) words, when it goes live, the Euro-iTMS will reportedly sell ringtones for mobile phones alongside those 700,000 songs. MacPlus seems to think that implies that a future iPod may include telephony features, but we're not exactly holding our breath, here. But even without a phonePod on the horizon, it does actually sound kinda funky that Euro-iTunes might be able to sell you a copy of "White Wedding" for your iPod and a matching ringtone for your Nokia or whatever right alongside it. All together, now: "Les sonneries de téléphone sont sur la chaise!"

Okay, so it's been well over a year since Apple wowed us all with the third-generation iPod, and we don't mind telling you that we're starting to get a little impatient over here. Sure, Apple's in no rush, since the current iPods are reportedly still selling like six kinds of crazy, but we always begin getting a little antsy when an Apple hardware product goes over twelve months without a major overhaul. Bigger disks and software tweaks don't count; we're talking about change worthy of the label "fourth-generation." (On a related note, why, yes, we are harboring a little angst related to the iMac; however did you guess?)

There's been a fair amount of speculation on the 4G iPod so far, most of which has made at least a passing reference to alleged video capabilities that have been grafted on. That prediction would seem to run counter to Steve Jobs's repeated insistence that portable video just isn't a reasonable application, because while you can listen to music while doing all sorts of other tasks, such as operating a motor vehicle or torturing your enemies with various pointy implements, watching a movie requires your full attention-- plus, nobody wants to watch video on a 2-inch screen anyway. But at some point we seem to recall that Jobs had addressed the possibility of connecting future 'Pods to TV sets, and he didn't exactly scoff and then insult everyone in the room.

Well, AppleInsider has a little clarification on the 4G iPod's supposed video features. A source who claims to have used a 4G prototype confirms rumors that the new model will indeed sport a color screen, but will not support playing video on it. Instead, owners will reportedly be able to connect one end of a special video cable to the iPod's dock connector and the other end to a TV, at which point the iPod will automatically switch into "video mode" and provide a list of playable video files stored on the iPod's hard disk. Selecting any such file would then play it right on the TV, which ought to be far more satisfying than trying to get twelve relatives to huddle around your iPod to squint at your vacation footage at 160x160 resolution.

Incidentally, the manner in which those videos find their way onto the iPod is worth a mention; remember that "Home on iPod" feature that mysteriously vanished from Panther's published marketing materials? This was the thing whereby you could sync a copy of your entire home directory to your iPod, which you could then attach to any Panther-running Mac via FireWire and then log in just like you were back at your own Mac. Well, reportedly it'll be making a triumphant return, if not in the "hefty update" of Mac OS X 10.3.5, then in Tiger. We suppose we'll know more when WWDC finally rolls around. The relevance from a videoPod point of view is that anything copied from your Movies folder ought to show up as a TV-playable video file when the 4G iPod is running in video mode.

Sounds good to us, although we're actually a little disappointed that videos can't be played on the iPod's little color screen; sure, you wouldn't want to watch the sweeping vistas of the letterboxed Lawrence of Arabia that way (indeed, we have a feeling that even trying is illegal), but for those of us with rugrats running around, it'd be a nice bonus to be able to inflict low-res video clips of our iMovied offspring on unsuspecting passers-by; sort of the 21st-century version of the age-old "here, look at the six thousand photos in my wallet" move. Still, it's not a deal-breaker or anything, and since the 4G iPod reportedly will allow the display of photos on its color screen, well, it's still a step up for obnoxious geek parents everywhere.

Since things are a little slow right now, why don't we just go hog wild with the whole theme and take another look at something else that's darn slow-- namely, the development cycle of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn? If nothing else, maybe it'll mess with those Google ads down there at the end of the episode and spawn all sorts of hilariously off-topic and poorly-targeted links to Windows products again. That's always fun.

You probably recall the "controversy" that arose last year when Microsoft's 2005 Longhorn ship date appeared to be slipping to 2006. You may also remember that Microsoft now only even expects to ship Longhorn in 2006 by leaving out a slew of features. Well, that strategy appears to have matured into something resembling a full-fledged plan, albeit not necessarily an attractive one: faithful viewer bo notes a CNET article which makes Longhorn sound like an operating system you buy in chunks over time, kinda like a living room set or something. And the final chunk, the full version of the WinFS file system that Bill Gates has reportedly called "the 'Holy Grail' of Longhorn," now isn't expected to ship until-- ready for this?-- 2009.

That's not a rumor, folks; that info comes straight from Microsoft's senior veep of Windows server development himself. Yipes. But while the entire, complete set of Longhorn features won't be available for five more years, there's an early development version already available showing some of the features that should actually make it into the 2006 edition. Even if you have zero interest in Windows (hey, like us! Should we form a special non-interest group or something?), it's at least worth taking a peek at how the operating system looks so far, because you might spot a few similarities to another OS that lives a little closer to home.

Check out the first look at Longhorn over at ExtremeTech, as pointed out to us by faithful viewer Roy H. In particular, make sure you scope out the slide show of screenshots, because while Longhorn's interface inherits the tackiness of XP's cartoon-colored icons, it's been gussied up a bit in ways that seem a little too familiar for coincidence. Note, for example, the soft alpha-channeled drop shadows cast by the rounded-edged windows. Witness the way windows can be drawn with varying degrees of translucence. And then consider Longhorn's slight 3D twist on Exposé, which stacks the windows instead of shrinking them all to fit without overlapping. ("You can actually see the contents," writes ExtremeTech. Well, um, roughly the leftmost 80 pixels' worth, anyway...)

Not that Microsoft swiping Apple's look and feel is anything new, of course (and Apple has certainly swiped a few features right back over the years), but it's still good for an eye-roll or two to see it happening through the development phase. The question is, will Tiger include any interface enhancements over Panther, and if so, will Microsoft have time to copy those, too, before Longhorn 1.0 (given the feature reduction, maybe that should be Longhorn 0.8) ships in two years' time?