Ever since it became clear that the "Apple iPod from HP" only differs from the classic Apple version by having different support coverage, Windows-oriented packaging, and an additional logo on its back, you may have been wondering why it even exists. After all, if you can't even get one in it's originally-planned hue of corpse-blue, what's the point?

Well, okay, you're not really wondering that, because you know full well that the real difference between Apple's iPod and HP's cobranded version is that HP has distribution deals in place with a whole lot more resellers. So while you'd never find an Apple product in a dump like Radio Shack (no flames, please-- we happen to like Radio Shack, but c'mon, going there to buy an iPod would feel a little like shopping for groceries at the 99-cent store), before long HP ones will be gracing the shelves of that fine establishment, no doubt nestled snugly between the air compressors and the radio-controlled cars. Considering that the Shack used to make you give them your phone number just to buy a pair of AA batteries, one can only imagine what sort of personal info they'll require before they'll let you walk out of there with an iPod; social security number, mother's maiden name, ATM PIN, full medical history, and date of and circumstances surrounding loss of virginity, we're guessing. For a start.

But if this whole "Apple iPod from HP" thing leads to an even more firmly entrenched lead in the portable digital music player market, hey, we're all for it, because the iPod's dominance is really the only thing standing in the way of the iTunes Music Store eventually getting crushed like a Rice Krispie under the sheer market weight of whatever Microsoft's calling its music thingy this week. And what better way to push 'Pods to the masses than to sell them at the monster of all retail monsters, Wal-Mart? That's right, kiddies, HP iPods have already surfaced at Wal-Mart's online store; of course, it's labeled "Online Only," so this may not have quite the market effect we'd hoped for, but it's a start.

Even better, though, is the way that this deal underscores just how strong a force the iPod is in the first place. You probably recall that Wal-Mart has its own music download store-- and one that undercuts the rest (as Wal-Mart so often does) by selling songs for 88 cents a pop instead of the near-ubiquitous 99 cents. Well, as you would expect, the "Microsoft of Retail" sells its songs in protected Windows Media format, which is, of course, completely incompatible with Macs, but more to the point, also unplayable on iPods. To that end, Wal-Mart's iPod page includes a big, red Important Note: "This player is not compatible with Wal-Mart Music Downloads."

In other words, the iPod is so white-hot that Wal-Mart can't not sell them, even if it means undermining the company's own music download service. From a money standpoint, of course, we're sure it's a no-brainer; at 88 cents a track, Wal-Mart must be barely breaking even on song sales, whereas iPods are big business. Still, it's sort of fun to watch an iTMS competitor (lame as it is) actively sabotage itself while promoting Apple's technologies instead.

Honestly, we don't mean to bag on the British, but if Apple really did have some sort of grudge against them a few years back, we're starting to understand why. Consider just how many of Apple's recent and ongoing woes have originated in the UK; the biggest is probably the Beatles lawsuit, which unspecified legal sources claim might result in Apple having to cough up the biggest non-class action settlement ever. Not long after that suit was filed, Brits banned an Apple commercial because the G5 may not actually have been "the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer." And most recently there's that UK consumer watchdog group trying to get Apple busted for preventing Brits from buying songs from the French or German iTunes Music Stores in order to save a few pence.

Well, toss another annoyance on the pile, folks, because while we forgot to mention that whole thing with British indie record labels refusing to sign with the iTunes Music Store for ages and ages (they apparently demanded the right to raise prices and break the iTMS's uniform price structure at a later date), we are going to mention how said UK indie labels are now whining that their music isn't available online now that they've finally reached an agreement. According to The Guardian, those very same labels who dragged their feet on signing up until well after the iTMS had formally launched in Europe are now expressing "frustration" that their catalogs still aren't up at the iTMS UK even though they "signed a license weeks ago."

Weeks ago! Yes, while Apple had no doubt been courting these same labels for months on end and was eventually forced to launch its store without them, they're "perplexed" and "bewildered" by the fact that Apple has the gall to take "weeks" to get the music online. Did we mention that there are hundreds of these labels who had all refused to sign, acting together under the auspices of the Association of Independent Music? And that means they had all probably signed at once. Gee, hundreds of record labels all finally decided to climb on board the iTMS at once a few weeks ago, and they can't figure out why their music isn't online yet? Well, here's one possibility: the iTMS Fairy is on vacation and she took her magic wand and pixie dust with her.

We're just speculating, here, of course, but it seems to us that there's a frightening amount of stuff to do before a label's catalog can be made available for sale at the iTMS. First, there's all the legal stuff that probably has to be approved and filed even after the contract itself is signed. Then there's the actual encoding of the music; here in the U.S. we thought that the indies themselves were responsible for that, but maybe in the UK, where indie labels frankly don't sound much different from the Big Five in terms of demanding higher prices and whatnot, maybe the agreement's different. So there's the encoding of the music, the setting of the ID3 tags, the addition of album art, etc. Now, take the legal issues, add them to the technical ones, and multiply by the hundreds of UK indie labels and suddenly it might not seem so "bewildering" that, "weeks" later, things still aren't ready for downloading.

We repeat, this is all just guesswork, and might be completely off-base. After all, at least some of the encoding's done, since a lot of those indies have their music on the U.S. iTMS, and some of them are complaining that they haven't even gotten a contract to sign, yet, so maybe the reason that nothing's moved forward is because Apple really is just slacking off. We don't know. What we do know is that we'd be completely stunned if Apple had somehow gotten the music of hundreds of indie labels online and ready to sell within just weeks of the contracts being signed. And we also know that instead of considering these factors, the indies decided it'd simply be best to whine to the press about the delay. Sheesh, if this sort of thing keeps up, if there wasn't an anti-UK vendetta before, there will be soon...

Has anyone noticed that Apple seems to be issuing a whole heckuva lot of security updates lately? Honestly, it got to the point where we just stopped mentioning them, because if you folks are half as sick of seeing them pop up in Software Update as we are, you definitely don't want to hear us yakking on about them, too, especially if they aren't fixing anything major and/or dramatic. (Hence our total non-coverage of Security Update 2004-09-07: "Privileged programs using CoreFoundation can be made to load a user supplied library"? Zzzzzzzz...)

So we were all prepared to ignore Security Update 2004-09-16 as well, until we noticed that it only patched a single application-- and that application was iChat. Since we'd never known iChat to be exactly plagued by security holes before (and certainly not any urgent enough to justify taking up a whole security update all by its lonesome barely a week after the last security update), we figured we should take a look and see what scary sort of Microsoftian security chasm was gaping in front of hapless iChat users that would certainly swallow them whole and send them plummeting to their doom.

It's the least we can do for the hapless. After all, those poor guys don't have any hap.

Well, we did a little poking around, and found Apple's explanation of just what this update fixes. Apparently, if you're using iChat on an unpatched system, "remote iChat participants can send 'links' that can start local programs if clicked." So there you are, iChatting away with, let's say, faithful viewer Richard Casey-Whiteman, when he says, "Hey, click to see a web site with a great picture of Anna Kournikova shucking oysters!!!" And of course, you click, expecting Safari to pop up and show you the comely tennis player perpetrating violence upon a bucket of bivalves-- but instead, TextEdit launches! Noooooooooo!!!

That's... that's it?

Wow. Um, well, technically we can't consider that much of a threat, unless you're in the habit of keeping applications on your hard drive like ReformatStartupDiskWithoutAsking.app. Details of the exploit are understandably absent, but we suppose maybe iChat allowed Terminal to be launched with a command to execute, like "rm -r ~/*" or some other unfun ultra-destructive UNIX ickiness, but we tend to think that Apple-- or someone else-- would have mentioned that. In any case, Apple's fix for this issue was to make such links open a Finder window containing the linked app instead of actually launching it.

So Windows users get a security hole that affects multiple versions of Windows plus several Microsoft applications and lets Wintel users get infected with nasty data-destroying viruses simply by looking at a picture, whereas we get a security update because an iChat buddy can send you a link that will launch Stickies. Oh, the inequity of it all...