Talk about getting out while the getting's good. Remember when we told you yesterday that European downloadable music bigwig OD2 had all but fled the market by selling itself to Loudeye? Instead of sticking around to duke it out with the recent flood of song-selling newcomers on OD2's European turf, the company opted to become Loudeye's European division that builds music download sites for other companies-- which was, given the circumstances, a stroke of sheer mercenary brilliance.

See, think of it this way: even if its clients' stores get steamrolled by the competition (which is getter more and more likely every day), OD2 at least still pockets the dough for building and supplying said stores before they go foom; meanwhile, there's the added buffer of Loudeye's overall revenue stream not relying on song sales-- European or otherwise-- alone. (Heck, as faithful viewer Pepe points out, even Apple is apparently a customer of Loudeye's in some capacity.) Overall, merging with Loudeye seems to be a far safer approach than going head-to-head with the likes of Sony, Napster, and Apple to sell songs directly to the consumer.

But since OD2 was the download market leader in Europe, why the retreat, and why so quickly? Well, mostly because the operative word here is "was." As faithful viewer Darcy points out, Apple has just issued a press release reporting the iTunes Music Store's first week of sales in Europe (or, seeing as it's just the UK, France, and Germany so far, "Europe"), and the results are pretty staggering: 800,000 songs sold in a single week. Oh, sure, that may not sound like much when you're used to the iTMS selling as many as 3.3 million songs in the same time period here in the States, but it's not a far cry from the million songs the iTMS sold in its first week after its U.S. debut last year, especially considering the size of the market over there.

Need to put it even further in perspective? Then consider that just two months ago, OD2 was gushing to the press that, in its role as "Europe's biggest legal downloads distributor," it had sold "over one million downloads in the first three months of the year"-- and now Apple has waltzed in and sold 80% of that in about 8% of the time. Indeed, the Stevequote in Apple's press release notes that of those 800,000 songs sold last week, 450,000 of them were purchased in the UK, which was "16 times as many" as those sold by OD2, Apple's "closest competitor." Sixteen times the sell-through of the former market leader in its first week since launch? Now let's hear those pundits say that the iTMS is only the top dog in the U.S. because it was first out the door.

Meanwhile, this whole "16 times OD2" thing implies that Napster got spanked even harder than that; gee, considering how poorly Napster is doing in the U.S. as well, how long do you suppose it'll be before Roxio gets sick of losing money and tries to unload the service on some other sucker, like Greg Brady tried to sell off that lemon of a used car he bought? Attention, gullible media conglomerates: caveat emptor!

Wait, the Worldwide Developers Conference is next week? How the heck did that sneak up on us? We knew that it's slated to kick off on the 28th, and we knew that today's the 23rd, but somehow we just never did the subtraction; we suppose that we've been anxiously awaiting the Tigeriffic Stevenote for so long, WWDC had just nestled so cozily into a spot in our brains labeled "Far Off Happy Things To Look Forward To" that we just never really figured it'd actually arrive. Jeez, now we're way behind-- how are we supposed to cram all of our pre-Stevenote speculation into a mere five days? Someone put some coffee on...

Oh, wait, never mind-- no need to panic. We forgot all about MacRumors's traditional avant-Steve rumor roundup, which harvests all of the more prominent bits of product speculation sprouting up hither and thither and conveniently tosses them together into a nice, big Rumor Salad (now with crunchy Speculation croutons!). And that's good, because we need a reference point from which to start, now that the whole "3 GHz G5" thing crashed and burned right into the possibility of a further Power Mac announcement come Monday and took the prospect of an imminent PowerBook G5 right along with it. (It's become a nightly ritual around here to kneel on the lawn, raise our hands pleadingly to the heavens, and shout "Boger! BOGERRRRRRR!!!" in our best William Shatner voice.)

So with Power Macs and PowerBooks out of the picture, what is on the horizon? Well, for one thing, there are those new aluminum displays that may finally end ten months of clashing pinstripes and polka dots; the latest rumors indicate that Apple will also be dropping the 17-inch screen and moving to a 20-/23-/30-inch lineup, with the "low-end" (!) 20-incher going for $999. As far as new Macs go, the buzz continues about a possible iMac G5, which is odd, since that's another long-awaited product that had its likelihood slashed to ribbons by Boger's comments when he said that sticking a G5 into an iMac "would be a heck of a challenge" and that it was "the same story" as with the PowerBook G5 that we shouldn't expect "before the end of the year." But apparently hope springs eternal; gee, maybe we'll get other Bogernated products as well, like the PowerBook G5 and a dual-3.0 GHz Power Mac!

Rounding out the rumors are whispers of "hangable and interactive displays," a further "partnership with TiVo," and "AirTunes-enabled iPod technology," which is all spiffy stuff. There's just one problem: as of yet, there's been no mention of a webcast of the event, or even a satellite broadcast that'll be picked up at theater-equipped Apple retail stores. Back when WWDC was "just" WWDC, that never surprised anyone, since a keynote at a developers' conference wasn't likely to stir the imaginations of the general public. But since Steve's taken pains in recent years to turn his annual WWDC keynote address into a permanent replacement for his now-defunct summer Macworld Expo speech, topics of a decidedly general interest (such as last year's Power Mac G5 launch) have become routine. Without a broadcast, though, we have to consider the possibility that the only new product we'll see next Monday will be Tiger itself.

Oh, and just a reminder, folks; this particular Rumor Salad deals exclusively with speculation about new products, not Stevenote rumors in general. As such, you shouldn't read anything into the absence of the widespread rumor that Steve has chosen this event as his occasion to unmask and reveal his true identity as Xlurrgh'lx, Overlord and High Commander of the Mighty Viscous Slug Beings of Zosma 3, before inviting all Mac users to join him aboard his battle cruiser before he liquefies the remaining Earth population to feed to his planet's cattle. Because that one's practically a lock.

Speaking of those rampant iMac G5 rumors, we should probably clarify that while Apple's Tom Boger did, in fact, tell MacCentral that wedging a G5 into an iMac form factor would be "a heck of a challenge" on par with the creation of the PowerBook G5, and he did tell us not to expect a PowerBook G5 before 2005, he never explicitly stated that the iMac was a next-year product as well. What's more, the guy is actually Apple's Director of Power Mac Product Marketing, so we imagine he wouldn't necessarily know about what the iMac developers were working on from an engineering perspective. It's a thin straw, sure, but if you want to keep hope alive for an iMac G5 to debut onstage next to Steve on Monday, feel free to grasp at it. Ah, g'wan-- it's fun!

Got your suspension of disbelief mojo workin', now? Good, because AppleInsider reports that a channel flush of iMac inventory has been underway for a while now, and also claims to have new details about the product revision that should ship in "mid-July." According to AI, the new puppy will indeed be G5-based, packing single processors "at speeds below 2 GHz" into a "completely redesigned enclosure." (So much for the challenge of squeezing a G5 into the existing iMac chassis.) One AI source states that "the new iMac will sport a vertical 'pizza box' physique with the main logic board mounted vertically behind the computer's LCD screen." Sort of a "Spartacus Lives" concept, we guess.

While AI claims that an iMac G5 announcement may come "as early as" this Monday's Stevenote, it's careful not to make any promises-- which is just as well, because astute Apple-watchers may have noticed something a little fishy about the "vertical pizza box" iMac G5 design as reported. Namely, Ive has already admitted in interviews that he'd spent over a year working on a vertical-motherboard-behind-the-screen design for the iMac G4 before Steve persuaded him to scrap it and start over because it wasn't "perfect." (The current screen-on-a-stick design was subsequently inspired by a sunflower in Steve's wife's vegetable garden.) Also, a flat vertical orientation would probably be just as hard to pop a G5 into as the current design, if not harder.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that the iMac G5 isn't such a design, or even if it isn't, that it isn't coming in three weeks' time. And frankly, we thought it was coming last April, and after the G5 speed bump delays, the European iTunes Music Store delays, the continuing display update delays, etc. we're sick and tired of being sick and tired. At this point we'd even be happy with an iMac G5 shaped like a baboon's hindquarters as long as it shows up this Monday.

In fact, we're looking around and realizing just how well a baboon's-hindquarters iMac G5 would class up the joint while still blending perfectly with our existing decor. Bring it on!