And July kicks off with a bang! Just think, here we were concerned that after the thrill ride known as June, from an Apple drama perspective this month would wind up relatively tame by comparison-- but here we are just one day in, and what do we get? Apple breaking longstanding policy by commenting on unannounced products; Apple admitting it totally muffed its inventory control to a seemingly unprecedented degree; Apple nuking its own stock price in a bizarre display of verbal self-flagellation. Why, we could probably coast through the rest on the month on this one topic alone if we really had to. Clearly somebody up there likes us.

You've surely heard the news by now, but it came to us first via faithful viewer Simone Bianconcini, who'd been browsing the Apple Store when she noticed an uncharacteristically honest blurb on the store's iMac page: "Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September." Bickety-bam, straight from the horse's web page: there's a third-generation iMac headed your way in less than three months' time. Since the product itself will be announced in September, we assume this must be the announcement of the announcement. How rude of Apple that we had to find out about it from a faithful viewer who just happened to stumble upon the info while shopping; you'd think the company would have had the common courtesy to issue an announcement of the announcement of the announcement.

Now, this is already pretty juicy, what with Apple publicly acknowledging the advent of an "all-new" line of iMacs in a couple of months' time and all, and yet we haven't even gotten to the kicker yet. The announcement-announcement continues: "We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect." Eeeeeeyouch. Apple's been pretty notoriously awful about product forecasting in the past, but we can't remember a single other instance in which the company would have run so dry of a discontinued product prior to the release of its successor that Apple actually had to stop taking orders and sheepishly admit its terrifying lack of timing and coordination.

No wonder Apple seemed to be taking its own sweet time in getting a new iMac out the door; if the whole crop of current iMac models (which Apple has admitted quarter after quarter have been selling slowly for ages now) will vanish entire months before the new ones arrive, it seems obvious that Apple had planned to ship the third-gen models weeks or probably even months ago, but hit some sort of technical snag. Hmmmm, that sort of thing sure seems to be happening a lot these days, doesn't it? Power Macs, Xserves, you know the drill.

But regardless of the reason for the delay, here's what we just don't get: the new iMacs will be shipping in September, right? We may be wrong, here, but according to our math, that's only a couple of months away. If the systems are really going to ship in September, is there a plausible reason why Apple would pull this "we screwed up" play instead of throwing together a last-minute press conference to introduce the new system and say "accepting preorders now, shipment in September"? After all, it's not like Apple's never introduced a product more than two months before its ship date before; heck, even the original iMac debuted onstage three months before it hit store shelves, and the media hype leading up to the launch was tremendous. We just don't see why Apple wouldn't go that route... unless "available in September" really means "shipping around Christmas" or something like that, in which case, yeah, okay, all bets are off.

For whatever reason, though, Apple opted to take the "we blew it" path, and Wall Street is none too pleased; at last check, Apple's stock was down $1.32 in after-hours trading. There goes June's upwards momentum; here's hoping it doesn't keep creeping back down again, because we rather liked having a portfolio with green numbers instead of red ones for a change.

By the way, yes, we've heard all about the iMac-birthday-Paris thing, and credulous as we are, even with Apple's own admission that new iMacs will ship in September, we still think it's a load of hooey. And if you're going to tell us we must be getting cynical in our old age, we'll shake our fists at you and yell "dagnabbit!" until you retreat in utter bafflement and indifference. Don't say we didn't warn you, you young whippersnappers.

But let's not dwell on the downers, okay? After all, the iMac well running dry wasn't even the big news today-- or at least that's what Apple certainly wants you to think, because while the "Yes, We Have No iMacs" admission was understandably low-key, Apple isn't being the least bit subtle about the iTunes Music Store's rapidly-approaching 100 millionth song download. While the company had hoped (not "expected"; everyone keeps saying "expected" and it makes us lose our patience) to reach the nine-digit milestone by the store's first anniversary, a thoroughly botched Pepsi giveaway and a delayed European expansion put that goal out of reach, but now it's just two months later, and the song count has vaulted from 70 million to 95 million, meaning that the big One-Zero-Zero (-Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero) is probably no more than maybe ten days away. Ooooh, you can almost smell the excitement!

Really, smell it? It's kind of like... feet?

Oh, wait... that's us. Never mind.

Still, though, there is excitement in the air, due in large part to Apple's Crazy Big Giveaway during this momentous occasion. Faithful viewer Patrick tipped us off to Apple's press release announcing the company's plan to give away fifty-- count 'em, fifty-- 20 GB iPods, one to each person who downloads "each 100,000th song" between 95 and 100 million. And the lucky guy or gal who happens to download the 100 millionth song gets a prize pack fit for the gods themselves: a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40 GB iPod, and (tell us this isn't the coolest) an iTMS gift certificate for 10,000 songs. The winner also gets fifteen minutes of fame, in the form of "the opportunity to create their own Celebrity Playlist to be published on the iTunes Music Store." And here's the big news, people: "All iTunes Music Store customers in the US, UK, France, and Germany are eligible." That's right, this isn't one of Apple's typical US-only deals. We're not sure, but we think that may technically qualify as a bona fide miracle.

Meanwhile, Apple's home page is displaying a semi-live countdown-- er, countup-- which, at broadcast time, was only 25,000 songs shy of the 95 million mark. So get ready to get buyin', you. Faithful viewer sbi suggests that when you try to time your purchase to win an iPod or the whole enchilada, you buy John Vanderslice's song "Bill Gates Must Die," just to make the press release that much more entertaining if you succeed.

By the way, Apple's press release also happens to announce the latest iTMS download numbers for Europe: "iTunes will sell its 95 millionth song tomorrow, including over 1.5 million songs sold in the UK, France and Germany since iTunes was launched in Europe two weeks ago." So 800,000 songs the first week, and 700,000 in the ten days after that; accounting for an expected post-launch slowdown (after all the press at the media event burned through their free £15/€20 gift certificates), that's not bad at all. A settled average of half a million songs a week pales in comparison to the sales rate here in the States, but consider the market; prior to the iTMS launch over there, the UK bought 500,000 downloaded songs in five months-- and then 450,000 from the iTMS in one week.

100 million songs just days away, Europe taken by storm-- and thus is the next phase of Steve's master plan for world domination complete...

Just a quickie, here, folks, because this is far too weird to say much about, but there's no way we can let it pass without comment. The background info's going to seem so far off-topic it's six dimensions over and four parallel universes down, but bear with us, because it really is going somewhere, we promise. Have we ever led you astray? Other than that time we mistakenly assured you that all of Apple's motherboards are dishwasher-safe, we mean. That was just a typo.

Okay, here goes: faithful viewer mrmgraphics forwarded us an Associated Press article about a New Jersey company named International Flavors & Fragrances, which has apparently found a way to reproduce the smells of living flowers. This is significant because most floral perfumes are made from "extracts, essential oils, or ground petals," all of which are drawn from dead plants and therefore smell, logically enough, rather different than the real live flower in bloom. Indeed, the same flower may smell different at different times; "Each flower has a biorhythm, a life cycle. A perfumer may or may not want the 'peak' scent. There are many different accords from the same single flower."

(At least, that's what IFF says; to us and our tin noses, a rose is a rose is a rose. In a blind smell test, we're not entirely sure we could distinguish between an actual blooming rose and a scratch 'n' sniff sticker.)

Anyway, so here's how IFF works its magic: it has a special glass-globe-'n'-retractable-needle rig and the needle is positioned in the flower's "headspace," as close as possible to the flower itself. The needle collects the odor molecules given off by the live flower for half an hour, a computer crunches the data, and IFF gets a "fragrance profile" that enables them to produce "nature-identical molecules" synthetically which duplicate the exact scent as captured. Kinda like duping music from CDs, actually. Or not. Whatever. The upshot is that they can sample a smell and then reproduce it exactly in the lab.

And this is where we finally get to the point: any smell. When it wasn't sticking a needle in front of a night-blooming orchid, "IFF produced Gigabyte, a perfume based on the smell of computers as a special project for Visionaire magazine. Instead of the needle collecting a flower's molecules, it captured the headspace in the Apple computer store in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood."

Yes, ladies, you heard correctly: there's a perfume out there somewhere that can make you smell like a Mac sitting in a flagship Apple retail store. Just imagine the hordes of rampaging Mac geeks chasing you everywhere you go! What could possibly be better?

Don't answer that.