Erratum time! As you all know, we here at AtAT make mistakes so infrequently we're actually classified as Grade 7 Perfection Deities in some official handbook or other that we just now made up in our heads. Every couple of thousand years, however, an error slips through, and once or twice a millennium it's one that's consequential enough to merit an actual correction. Well, consider today a red letter day, because remember a couple of days ago when we made a whole big thing about how Apple had rejected our application for the new iTunes Affiliate Program? As it turns out, the degree of our rightness on that topic was suboptimal. Meaning, that was not the most right we'd ever been.

Okay, fine, we were wrong. Happy now?

See, having heard repeatedly from multiple sources over the years that Apple's corporate take on our little show here is that we're just another one of those rumors sites it so despises, when we applied for the program on Wednesday morning, we were 100% expecting an immediate rejection-- so when we got one a few hours later, we nodded once in grim self-satisfaction, produced our scene, and promptly put the whole matter out of our minds. Imagine our surprise 36 hours later, then, when we suddenly received email with the subject line "Apple iTunes Congratulations! You've been accepted to the iTunes Affiliate Program." Figuring it for an oh-so-subtle gag by an AtAT viewer with a dorky sense of humor and too much time on his hands, we nevertheless opened the message and read it.

"We are thrilled to welcome you as a partner," it gushed (well, as far as boilerplate text can gush, anyway)-- and it included startling details from our application, including our previously-determined username and password for the iTunes Affiliate site. If this was some viewer's lame gag, said viewer not only had the aforementioned dorky sense of humor and too much time on his hands, but also access to Apple's secure servers... which, if he did, surely he'd be too busy downloading credit card info and iTunes Volume Discount Program redemption codes to be messing with our heads. Frankly, confusing us is about as much of a challenge as making water wet, so what's the point?

So we dug up Wednesday's rejection letter and read it a little more carefully: "We regret that we can not accept your company into the Apple Store Associates Program at this time..."

Ohhhhh, the Apple Store Associates Program. Right. See, we totally forgot about clicking some check box somewhere during the iTunes application process that offered to double up our submission; as the iTunes Affiliates page mentions, all applicants to the iTunes program are invited to "apply to the Apple Store Affiliate Program"-- gee, the name just changed, there-- as well, which pays commissions on referred sales at the online Apple Store. And evidently whoever's in charge of the Apple Store program shot us back a rejection quicker than you can say "Good God No," while the folks running the iTunes program chewed it over for a day or so and then decided to let us in.

So, yeah, apparently we're all hooked up on the iTunes front, and if you click that charming little charcoal tag to the right, there, you'll be taken to the iTMS-- and if you buy anything within 24 hours of clicking through, Apple will kick us a 5% finder's fee. (We'll find a permanent place for the link to live soon. Right now we just want to see if it works.) So if you're in the mood for 99 cents' worth of downloady goodness, please consider buying through this link so we can see if a nickel really does miraculously teleport into our piggy bank.

And there you have it, folks; we may be too trashy to hawk Macs, but apparently we just barely squeaked by Apple's "YOU MUST BE AT LEAST THIS RESPECTABLE TO PIMP SONGS" requirement. And although this marks the first time in seven years that AtAT will theoretically be getting paid by Apple, we'd like to take this opportunity to assure you that the fact that we're now on Apple's payroll will in no way alter the AtAT content you know and love. It'll be just as packed full of Apple jingoism and cheerleadery rah-rah-rahs as always, except maybe with a little less executive team namecalling. And slightly fewer death threats. And a complete lack of criticism of any Apple policies, product shortcomings, or crimes against man, society, or nature. But otherwise it'll be exactly the same; after all, we have our integrity.

Man, did we say that the gloves are off? Because we didn't even realize just how right we were. Oh, sure, we knew that once it got its new music download service off the ground, Microsoft would be its usual insufferable self by flat-out lying to the press about how they're the first "to finally bring digital music to the masses" and claiming that "the Apple effort didn't really change what [it] would have done." And we also expected Apple, in its unfamiliar role as Top Dog, to get a little flustered and fall into a defensive position, since that's exactly what it did when all that RealNetworks-sponsored "Freedom of iPod-Hacking Choice" hit the proverbial fan. What we didn't expect was for the trash talk to get so downright nasty.

Check it out: a MacMinute article describes the statement that Apple apparently sent around to any media outlet that might listen, in which "Apple makes it clear what the score is in the digital music industry"-- specifically, 125,000,000 to 0. And Apple doesn't think Redmond will catch up anytime soon, in part because "Microsoft's music store currently offers only half the songs and is missing many features," says Apple. Okay, true dat, although it is just a beta, so more features will no doubt come in time, and Microsoft says it'll have at least as many songs as the iTMS in its catalog by next month. "But its biggest problem may be that its downloaded songs do not play on iPod, iPod mini, or the Apple iPod from HP-- the world's most popular digital music players with over 50% market share... The iTunes Music Store is currently selling over 16 million songs per month (a rate of 200 million songs per year). How many songs will Microsoft's new online music store sell during its first month?" Good points, one and all, but it comes off as just a little desperate, don't you think?

Especially since Bill Gates is calmly scoring major points off of Steve Jobs, albeit slimily while the Stevester is still off on medical leave nursing a post-surgical pancreas and unable to defend himself. Here's how it went down: faithful viewer The Professor dished us a CNET article which raises the debate over whether or not portable video is worth a hill of beans. Apple, you may recall, says it isn't, because unlike music, you can't enjoy portable video while you do other things, and watching movies on a teensy LCD screen blows chunks anyway. Microsoft, on the other hand, thinks portable video will be the bee's knees, and is investing a lot in its Portable Media Center architecture. And here's how Bill did the damage: "Ask kids in the back of a car on a two-hour trip, 'Hey, would you like to have your videos there?' My kids would. I guess Steve's kids just listen to Bach and Mozart. But mine, they want to watch Finding Nemo. I don't know who made that, but it's really a neat movie."

Now, whether or not you accept the whole "kids need DVDs on long car trips" argument as valid or not, there's no denying that with those comments, Billy-boy scored what can only be described as a "righteous burn." We know it's officially Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day and all, but c'mon, you have to give Bill credit for that one, even though in polite society it's generally considered poor form to zing recovering cancer patients behind their backs. But hey, he's the richest guy in the world and he's gonna do what he wants.

So will Steve or Bill wind up with the last laugh? Personally, we have no idea how it'll all turn out. We expect the iTMS to blow the doors off of Microsoft's copycat entry for at least a year or two, but after that the fight is simply Quality vs. Quantity (guess which is which) and in this world, it's anyone's game. As for video, following an initial rush by cash-flush gadget nerds, sales of Portable Media Centers will either crater or explode, depending entirely on whether the average shmoe is willing to lug around a $500 device that's only slightly smaller and lighter than the original 1993 Newton MessagePad just so they can watch Fear Factor on a screen only a wee bit bigger than a camcorder's LCD while riding the subway. (At that size, will we even be able to see the chunks in the squid ink?) We'll see what the market has to say.

Last up in today's all-iTMS episode, we play Big Freaky Bald Space Guy With White Eyes and a Cape and ask "What If... Apple and Sony had teamed up on digital music?" Because according to an IDG News Service article pointed out by faithful viewer oskar, if not for Sony CEO Nobuyuki Idei's rumored dislike for Steve Jobs, we might well have witnessed just that. See, reportedly Steve-o approached Idei "when the two met at the Sony Open golf tournament in Hawaii this January" (yes, it's a rough life, being CEO of a big tech company) and offered to "bring the Sony brand" into the iTMS, which "would have allowed for joint operation of the service," whatever that means.

See, apparently Steve was understandably nervous about Microsoft's impending entry into the downloadable music market, and he figured that if Apple and Sony teamed up, that'd be arguably the two biggest names in consumer high-tech throwing their weight behind the same service-- which would "maintain a competitive advantage" over whatever Microsoft finally barfed up. But quoth Idei, "No wei Hosei"-- and a few months later Sony instead launched its own competing service called Sony Connect. And gee, guess what? Connect made about as big a splash in the market as From Justin To Kelly, and critics called it "an embarrassment to the company," for botching pretty much every aspect of a music download service except for its pricing, which wasn't any lower than the iTMS's anyway.

Since Connect uses Sony's proprietary ATRAC format and therefore only works on Sony's own players, presumably the company was banking on its Walkman brand name to sell compatible players, which would in turn drive music sales at Connect. But because the Network Walkman NW-HD1 is expensive and won't even play MP3 files, you don't see them in the wild very often; heck, even Sony's own president doesn't know which end of the Network Walkman is the top. So while the iPod and iTunes continue to enjoy explosive growth, Idei's choice to go it alone has saddled Sony with a flop of a service tied to a flop of a device.

So how would things have turned out if Sony and Apple has teamed up? Well, considering the timing, we expect Jobs pitched a deal similar to the one he hammered out with Hewlett-Packard the same month: iTunes preloaded on all VAIOs, and either FairPlay AAC licensed to work on Sony's Network Walkmen or-- dare we say it?-- the advent of the "Apple iPod + Sony." And actually, why not? The iPod is at least as slick as any device Sony has cranked out in donkey's years, and it's got the sort of mind share that the Walkman brand hasn't enjoyed in decades. Now imagine Apple, HP, and Sony all pushing iTunes, and all selling iPods. That's the sort of scenario that'd have Microsoft reaching for a change of pants.

Of course, the reality is far less compelling, which is that Sony, possibly the world's top consumer electronics brand, turned down Apple's offer-- so instead of co-dominating the market, it's barely even a blip on the radar. What a waste, hmmm? Well, maybe another couple months of negligible Connect activity and lackluster Network Walkman sales will send Idei back to the bargaining table. Let's just hope he heads to Cupertino, and not Redmond...