Yeah, we know just what you're going through: colors aren't as bright, the birds barely sing, and even your Mac seems a little less lickable these days. There's no doubt about it-- we're all suffering the symptoms of Missing Steve. Not that any of use would begrudge him his month off to recover from his cancer surgery, of course, but this is by far the longest stretch of Steve deprivation we'd had to endure since his 1996 return to the company he cofounded, and frankly, we just don't think we're built for extended use in Steve-free environments. Hang in there, though, folks; we're just a week from the end of the month, so our Steveless August is finally drawing to a close.

In the meantime, while the fresh stuff remains unavailable, how about a bracing hit of 100% Steve from concentrate to tide you over? Look no further than AlwaysOn, who has done us all a much-needed public service by posting the latest installment of a Steve interview conducted by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg at D: All Things Digital last June. In part 4 of the interview, Steve touches on such subjects as how Mac OS X is "inherently more secure" than Windows (the Update Score since Mac OS X's inception: 43 updates, 2% critical vs. Windows XP's 77 updates, 66% critical), how he juggles two CEOships ("I'm in touch pretty much all the time"), and, perhaps most interestingly, what's up with his political aspirations.

Now, we're not out to dash any hopes, you understand, especially in your current vulnerable Steveless state, but it was widely reported that Steve had signed on to be an economic adviser to presidential candidate John Kerry, and apparently that's not the case, regardless of what Kerry spokeswoman Laura Capps reportedly told the press. In Steve's words: "I called him up and said that I've had a little bit of experience with advertising and I'd be glad to help him on advertising. Then a week later I read that I was an economic advisor." Advertising, economics... those are pretty much the same thing, right? Meanwhile, we can't help noticing that Errol Morris, who churned out Apple's Switch ads (including one of his son), is producing similar ads for MoveON PAC featuring former Bush voters explaining why they're going to vote for Kerry. Coincidence?

So apparently Steve is not Kerry's economic advisor, but if you're heaving a sigh of relief because you're still holding out hope that there'll be an eleventh-hour independent Jobs/Schiller ticket for your ballot in November, we should mention that Steve is pretty clear about his intentions as far as public office is concerned: "I'm going to just stay away from all that political stuff." We know, it's disappointing, but look at it this way: if Steve were president, security at January Macworld Expos would be a total nightmare. Then again, the State of the Union Address would be a Stevenote. Hmmmm...

Whatever; the point is, it's not happening-- and that's probably a good thing, since Apple needs as much Steve as the man can spare. (You think it's a coincidence that RealNetworks's Rob Glaser pulled all this "FreedomofMusicChoice.org" nonsense when Steve was out on sick leave? Please.) Meanwhile, don't go expecting a return to the status quo at midnight on September 1st or anything; remember, Steve only said that he "expected" to return to his day-to-day Apple duties "in September," which is maddeningly unspecific about just when in September he'll be back at the helm-- and there's always the chance that he'll decide to extend his time off for further recovery. Still, the sooner we leave August behind, the sooner we'll get our Fearless Leader back. We're counting the minutes.

Still not cringing with nervous anxiety over the havoc that the imminent launch of Microsoft's downloadable music store will no doubt wreak on the digital tunes landscape? You have cooler heads than we do, then, because we're practically wrecks over what the next week or two may bring. We've already mentioned how Microsoft has a ready-made captive audience for its store, with an instant 130 million potential customers about to be shunted right to Microsoft's music outlet as soon as Windows users are automatically "prompted to update their media player software"-- and don't forget the over-a-third-of-a-billion shmoes who'll no doubt be "informed" of the new service when they use MSN or Hotmail.

Well, further details about Microsoft's store have come to light in a Rolling Stone article, and they're doing nothing to calm our nerves. Sources claim that the store will launch on September 2nd with "between 600,000 and 700,000 tracks for sale at ninety-nine cents apiece," leaving Apple with no price advantage and only a slightly larger catalog-- and "within a couple of months, it will match Apple's 1 million offerings." So Windows users probably won't be switching from Microsoft's default store to iTunes because of price... and Redmond may have a trump card up its sleeve when it comes to selection.

See, there are unconfirmed murmurings (continuing from our first mention in June) that "Microsoft will use its financial clout to become the first site to offer the Beatles catalog" online, which is the closest thing to a Holy Grail that the download business has. Reportedly the band "demands tens of millions of dollars for a long-term exclusive arrangement." Only tens of millions? We bet Apple would have broken off a teensy piece of its $5 billion war chest and forked it over in a Liverpool second-- but, of course, we doubt the Beatles would have licensed their catalog to Apple at any price, what with that ongoing litigation and all. So if the rumors are true, digital music newbies looking to download Abbey Road are going to be doing it at Microsoft's store.

Of course, Apple's trump card probably carries even more clout than the Beatles: the iTunes Music Store is the only download store that sells music that's officially supported for playback on the iPod, which is the market leader among portable digital music players by a furlong or four. Indeed, according to the article, "Microsoft has made several overtures to Apple to make its store compatible with the industry-leading iPod but has been rebuffed." But is iPod compatibility enough of an advantage to overcome Microsoft's marketing budget? Because faithful viewer John O. tipped us off to a CNET article which reports that the company is about to launch a branding campaign that will align all Windows Media services and hardware in a unified attack to "show that the Apple universe is a little one, and Microsoft is a big one."

Apparently the plan is for all WMA-supporting devices and stores to display a little "Plays for sure" logo, which will indicate to customers that the product or service has been certified compatible with all the other products and services bearing the mark. So when consumers go shopping for gadgets, they'll see that every player on the shelf works with Microsoft's music-- except for the iPod (well, and those crazy Sony thingies, but no one particularly cares about those). Now, while we wouldn't necessarily expect someone to choose a player based on which music store they want to use with it, consider the typical Windows user who buys a few albums through Microsoft's store (since it's preinstalled and everything) and then decides to buy an iPod. Either the guy's going to notice the iPod's lack of compatibility with his purchased music and buy something else, or he'll unknowingly buy the iPod and get ticked off later when he gets home. Either way, it's not a happy situation.

There's presumably nothing stopping Apple from licensing WMA and supporting it on the iPod in order to qualify for the "Plays for sure" logo (on iPods, if not the iTMS) to keep its hardware sales from bottoming out, but a move like that might well prove the death knell for the superior AAC format. All we can say for sure is that there's a shakeup coming, and six months from now things are probably going to look different. A lot different.

You know, if Apple's determined to turn the digital music scene into one big "Us versus Them" battle, we figure the company needs as much help on its side as possible. You may have forgotten about one such ally: Hewlett-Packard. Don't worry, you're excused; it was ages ago when the company announced that it'd be preloading iTunes on every HP and Compaq home computer. We're not sure when the preloading started, but the company has had a special iTunes download link for existing customers live since March. Between Apple's iTunes downloads and HP's preloading, there could be a sizeable fleet of Wintels out there with iTunes in line ahead of Windows Media Player 10.

Of course, the part of the Apple-HP agreement that everyone fixated on was HP's announcement that it'd be selling a rebranded iPod sometime this summer, which, coupled with iTunes lurking preinstalled on the hard drives of a solid number of Wintels shipped this year, makes for a hefty preemptive strike against Microsoft's imminent onslaught. There's just one problem: summer's almost over and HP still hasn't shipped a single 'Pod-- but luckily, that's about to change. According to MacRumors, the hPod was originally going to be a 3rd-generation iPod, but the delay arose once HP found out about the upcoming 4th-generation models and decided to wait. The HP-branded models are expected to appear at hpshopping.com beginning September 5th, which is a few days after Microsoft's music store is expected to go live, but we'll take what we can get. There's no word yet when the hPods will reach the retail channel.

Interestingly, MacRumors reports that the hPod's "body color is expected to be 'HP Blue,'" like the delicate corpse-colored prototype that Carly Fiorina held aloft when she broke news of the partnership. But we've since heard that HP may have scrapped the dead-body color scheme, presumably because white is so heavily identified with the iPod experience. If our own sources are correct (and we'd bet a shiny nickel that they are-- well, maybe a Canadian nickel), hPods won't be blue after all, but will look practically identical to Apple's 4th-gen models except for the HP logo on the back.

Other differences? Well, you can't get it engraved, so there'll be no "CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BUTT TUCK, EUNICE" iPod coming from HP, but on the plus side we hear that the "Apple iPod from HP" (as they may be oh-so-snappily named) comes with a full one-year warranty-- including phone support, which, as you all know, Apple has recently trimmed back to a single incident within the first 90 days of ownership. We've got no word on pricing yet, but we'd be surprised if there's much variance from Apple's prices either way.

Anyway, we'll see what comes to pass, but in any event, with HP pushing non-"Plays for sure" iPods on its sizeable chunk of the Wintel market, Apple stands a far better chance of not seeing its music platform crumble to dust as soon as Microsoft's music store touches down. It's a pity that hPods didn't sell sooner, since a larger installed base would obviously help even more-- but at least they're here in time for the holiday shopping season, which we expect to be a bloodier tussle than anyone's yet seen. We strongly recommend that you don protective garb before the fur starts to fly.