Oooh, can'tcha just taste the excitement? There's only a day left before Apple's big London music event, and while it's certainly the Europeans who are giddiest (what with the long-awaited prospect of reasonably-priced song downloads from a service that doesn't make you want to hurl-- and the accompanying thrill of imminent personal bankruptcy), the rest of the Apple-watching world is also holding its collective breath, wondering what else might be in Steve's Magic Bag just itching to be unleashed upon the general populace in a day or so. Not that we're actually expecting anything more than European access to the iTunes Music Store, mind you, but when Apple goes to all the trouble of putting together a "special media event," there's always a chance it won't be a one trick pony.

Indeed, since Steve Jobs reportedly confirmed the June 15th Euro iTMS launch date when he spoke at D: All Things Digital last week, its arrival won't be much of a shock to anyone who's been paying attention-- and yet faithful viewer Chris Bassett grabbed a quick picture of Old Billingsgate Market with his mobile phone and notes that iPod silhouette posters block all the windows and "there is security coming out of every orifice." That sounds to us like there are some surprises up Steve's, er, sleeves and he wants to be sure that there's no peekin's. It's "evidence" of an entirely circumstantial nature, of course, but give us a break-- we don't get a Stevenote next month, so we're doing that whole "vicarious living" thing that's all the rage with the kids these days.

Meanwhile, the other downloadable music services in Europe are circling the wagons. Faithful viewer neopod tipped us off to a Macworld UK article which reports that Napster has just announced a brand spankin' new partnership-- one day before Apple's shindig, presumably as a preemptive thunder-swiping sort of maneuver. It seems that Napster has sucked up to British broadband provider NTL thoroughly enough to have secured a bundling deal whereby NTL subscribers can get a £9.95 monthly Napster subscription for the low, low price of-- £9.95. Okay, okay... that price includes a Napster sub and everything else in NTL's "Broadband Plus" package, which is apparently a bunch of cable 'n' Internet content that normally costs £3.99 without Napster, so it is a savings of over ten bucks a month.

And what about Europe's other big music service? Well, faithful viewer fabian informs up that BBC News is reporting the launch of OD2's new "online jukebox," SonicSelector, which still allows per-song purchases at £0.75/€0.99 each (less, for people who buy more), but which also streams individual songs for a penny a play. And gee, guess what? This also gets announced the day before Apple's little media clambake.

To be honest, we'd love it if this feature found its way over to the iTMS; the subscription model of forking over ten clams a month for all-you-can-listen-as-long-as-you-keep-paying just doesn't sit all that well with us-- but the chance to listen to a complete song for a penny before forking over 99 more to buy it? Heck, we'd use it constantly! Sometimes the 30-second previews just aren't enough; the first iTMS song we ever purchased wound up having Bono in it, for Pete's sake, and that alone almost turned us off of the service for good. Who wouldn't pay an extra penny to know exactly what he or she is about to buy? Although, frankly, we're amazed that the record labels approved such a system, given how trivial it is to record any sound playing on one's computer and save it in near-pristine form, but hey, whatever.

Anyway, the point is that Napster and OD2 both seem to have really... convenient timing with their announcements today. Call it a last-ditch effort to corral more customers before Apple waltzes in and changes everything. Will it work? Well, that sort of depends on what Apple has to show us all tomorrow, doesn't it?

Ah, the many dangers of wearing two hats at once: providing two targets instead of one when the local kids run amuck during snowball season; drawing the potentially violent ire of members of the international Men Without Hats fan club; even running afoul of federal Excessive Head Apparel legislation. But trust us-- even a fine, a beating, and a slushball to the temple combined is nothing compared to the inner turmoil Steve Jobs must be feeling as he tries to balance his Apple hat alongside his jaunty little Pixar chapeau (despite easily having the head geography to accommodate both). Being CEO of two companies is surely tough enough without those occasional situations that pit one side against the other.

Case in point: remember way back when Disney CEO Michael Eisner revealed himself to be tragically unhip when he interpreted "rip" in Apple's "Rip. Mix. Burn." ad campaign to mean "rip off" instead of "encode legally according to fair use as allowed by copyright law"? Ol' Mikey went howling to Congress about how computer manufacturers like Apple were flat-out encouraging digital piracy in their very ads. And of course Steve was far more polite than he could or even should have been about Eisner's ignorance when countering this charge in the press... over and over and over again. But that was then and this is now (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), and according to the Wall Street Journal, Steve's been making noises of a spookily Eisnerian bent of late.

See, it's one thing when the piracy's all about music, because as we all know, "Apple isn't in the music business." (Shhh. We know, but Beatles lawyers are everywhere. Shut up.) But Pixar, on the other hand, is very much in the movie business, and with Pixar box office returns in the billions and DVD sales accounting for a vast chunk of the company's income, piracy is a serious concern. That's why Steve had to decide which hat to wear more prominently at "a recent private meeting with Hollywood studio heads and tech czars"-- and his Hollywood hat came out on top in the end: "Mr. Jobs argued that studios shouldn't license their movies for use in the planned 'high-definition DVD' format until Hollywood is assured by the tech industry that the discs can't be copied" and "even suggested that high-definition DVD burners not be bundled with computers at all." Yipes!

In other words, it's possible that Macs may not be available with HD-DVD-R SuperDuperdrives when such things exist, because Steve's worried that computer owners would just dupe off a zillion copies of The Incredibles and there'd be more bootleg burns of Pixar flicks floating around than AOL CD-ROMs. Which is a kick in the pants, really, because his Apple hat surely makes him aware that honest Mac users would love to buy Macs with SuperDuperdrives for burning their own high-def iMovied creations using hiDVD. So here's hoping that when Steve yells about adequate copy prevention measures for copyrighted HD-DVD content, the tech industry takes him seriously. And the tech industry, obviously, includes Apple, too, which just makes the whole thing a little too weird; talking to yourself is one thing, but yelling at yourself is sketchy no matter how many hats you wear.

Attention, irrepressible optimists: we know you're out there, and we know that you're still undaunted by official Apple spokespeople telling the press not to expect a PowerBook G5 anytime soon and "certainly not before the end of the year." Somehow, through the magic mojo o' denial, you're still anticipating the arrival a portable G5 well in advance of all reasonable estimates. Heck, we bet there are at least two or three of you who are banking on it making its debut at Macworld Expo Boston next month, despite the lack of a scheduled Stevenote or, indeed, any Apple presence whatsoever. Worse yet, you're probably expecting it to debut at 2.5 GHz at the very least, especially give the great news that Apple is now using liquid cooling systems to allow for faster processors. Hooray!

Well, far be it from us to step all over your buzz, but, well, your buzz is annoying, so we're afraid that we're just going to have to disabuse you of this notion that a liquid-cooled Powerbook G5 is much closer to shipping than Apple would have any of us believe. While dual-2.5 GHz Power Macs aren't slated to ship until next month, somehow some photos of the cooling system apparently managed to claw their way out through the Silicon Curtain and deposit themselves on various web sites-- which have subsequently been dropping like flies due to bandwidth overages and the like. MacRumors first noted that Apple-X.net had the images, but also noted that excessive traffic had shut it down; it then pointed us to HardMac, who had mirrored "one of the more detailed photographs," but which we've only been able to reach intermittently today. If you can't get to that either, AppleInsider's got some of the photos as well.

Okay, so have you finally seen the photo of the G5 liquid cooling system? Yeah? So then you've noticed the big rubber hoses and copper tubing and giant pump mechanism and the fact that the entire assembly looks like it's roughly the size and shape of the engine from a Ford Pinto, right? Excellent. So then maybe you'll finally stop thinking that Apple is somehow going to wedge one of those into a PowerBook by next month, because it looks like Apple's going to have a hard enough time squeezing one into a Power Mac case without telling it to suck in its heat sinks while someone sits on the door to squeeze it shut. Well, okay, not really-- it's just the hoses that make it look that way. If you think about the scale, the whole pump assembly is actually just a little slip of a thing, but we're pretty darn sure it's still not cramming itself into a PowerBook unless Apple hits it with a Debigulator or drastically redefines the word "portable."

But don't lose all that precious optimism, folks; HardMac notes that "the liquid circulating inside the LCS is made of 80% water supplemented with corrosion inhibitors, antifreeze, and bacterial growth preventatives." Mmmmmmmmmm! So look on the bright side: when Apple does start shipping these suckers, whether in desktop or portable form, you'll never be far from a tasty and refreshing beverage. Thirsty?

[NOTE: We can't believe we feel we have to say this, but you really shouldn't drink that stuff because it'll probably blind and/or kill you. Worse yet, it'll kill your G5. Just say no to bacterial growth preventatives, kiddies.]