Wow, the holiday iPod sales estimates just keep creeping upwards. The first number we heard kicked around was 2.68 million, as predicted by newly-assimilated analyst Steven Milunovich of Merrill Lynch; at the time we remarked how low that seemed to us, because 34% quarter-to-quarter growth, while nice, sounds a bit skimpy for a must-have product during the holiday shopping season, especially with iPod sales having grown by 134% in the previous quarter and the iPod Photo and the iPod U2 Special Edition now joining the party. Forget EF Hutton, though-- when AtAT talks, people listen, because at some point Mr. Milunovich apparently boosted his estimate to an even 3 million, and then just bumped it again to 3.5 million a couple of days ago. (Gee, and we don't even have ties to the mob!) Meanwhile, Think Secret reports that Apple's own soothsayers are predicting sales of over 4 million iPods before the calendar year is out. Gol-ly.

To point out the obvious, that's a whole lotta iPods, folks, and Apple's going to need all the help it can get to sell them all. True, between Apple's own retail stores and its third party resellers, the iPod has excellent retail coverage these days-- and while we doubt that Apple's alleged 4 million sales projection includes HP iPods, there are plenty of new vendors selling those, as well. (You know, vendors that Apple itself wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole: QVC home shopping network, anyone?) Still, every little bit helps, so while Amazon has sold iPods of various flavors for ages, now, it's still very good news that the company has decided to turn up the volume a little.

See, faithful viewer Jon Slaton informs us that, as reported by iPodlounge, Amazon has launched a new iPod Store. Or sort of launched it, anyway; if you poke around in it a little, certain showrooms are still populated largely with echoes and tumbleweeds blowing across the floor. (We're quite certain that there should be more accessories listed than just the AppleCare for iPod Protection Plan, for example.) But every current model of iPod is collected right there in one handy place, and once Amazon fleshes out the rest of it and gives it an official coming-out party, we're sure that prominent links to it will be plastered all over Amazon.com like oatmeal on the keynote speaker at the annual Food Fighters Anonymous Meet 'n' Greet Breakfast. After all, Amazon's no dope; consumers will spend a billion-plus dollars on iPods over the next month and a half, and Amazon wants its share.

Unsurprisingly, we here at the AtAT compound welcome the advent of Amazon's iPod Store, since, unlike Apple, Amazon actually pays us when we send them iPod customers. So if you're in the market for an iPod or three in these last 45 shopping days before Christmas, provided you don't need any of them laser-engraved with an embarrassing pet name or the phone number of your therapist, consider buying them here; Amazon generally doesn't charge sales tax like the Apple Store does, you can opt for free standard shipping because you're ordering nice and early, and you'll be bankrolling us at no extra cost to yourself. What could be better?

By the way, if the concept of an online iPod Store strikes you as somehow familiar, well, you've actually been paying attention or something, because Apple launched one at the Apple Store a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly, we recently characterized the Apple Store's new customer review feature as further evidence of the Amazonification of Apple's online store, but now it looks as if both sites are mutually converging toward the same Applezon.com ideal. Expect news of the merger any day now.

Still stinging over Apple's insistence that letting the iPod play movies would cause sales to plummet, the stock to crater, and civilization as we know it to crash and burn as people by the billions would use their final breaths cursing the folly of whoever green-lit video on a two-inch screen? As we've said before, we understand all the arguments against it: no one wants to watch movies on a tiny screen, ripping most DVDs (including ones you've legally purchased) is against the law, people who really want movies on the go can just buy a portable DVD player with a bigger screen for less money, blah blah blah. None of that changes the fact that we'd still love to use a color iPod to wow the plebs on the bus with snippets of iMovied home video footage like this one. Seriously, the world would be a better place, wouldn't it? Aside from that whole "collapse of civilization and end of the human race," we mean.

Well, good news: faithful viewer gsxrboy tipped us off to a posting at Engadget explaining how to play video on an iPod Photo, kinda sorta. In a nutshell, you use QuickTime Pro or the media manipulation software of your choice to export a zillion frames from the movie in question as individual numbered image files, export the movie's soundtrack as an iPod-compatible sound file (say, AIFF or WAV), sync the images and sound to your iPod Photo, play the sound file, and then use the Click Wheel to advance through the images in order at an appropriate speed. The tricky bit, of course, is that whole "appropriate speed" bit; it takes a steady hand and a light touch to keep the frames advancing at a constant rate and synced up with the sound. If you've ever tried spinning a record on a turntable manually and getting the music to come out without making George Clinton sound like he was on even more drugs than usual, then you know what we mean.

If you don't know what we mean, then curse your nubile non-record-playing who-the-heck-is-George-Clinton born-in-the-'80s-or-later young selves and scope out the Engadget folks spinning a Star Wars trailer in this 12.7 MB QuickTime movie. (Of course they didn't turn off the wheel clicks; they're like a primitive metronome!) We have to say, that trailer looks a lot clearer than we would have expected on such a small and low-res screen. It may not be how we'd want to see Lawrence of Arabia or anything, but it's perfectly fine for inflicting home movies of Baby's First Spit-up on the rest of your car pool.

So now more than ever, we really hope that the iPod gains video-playing capability that doesn't require moving one's thumb in circles until it turns black and falls off. Not that we're arguing for the release of an iPod Video, mind you; all the arguments against such a beast essentially still stand. But we can't see the harm in adding some form of basic video playback to the iPod Photo (heck, even if it's just a slideshow with a 1/15th-of-a-second delay between pictures) as an "extra" alongside Notes and Solitaire, just so geeks like us can mess with it. And barring that, how long do you suppose it'll be before a third party company ships a clip-on variable-speed thumb-emulating Click Wheel attachment so that Engadget's method produces perfectly-timed iPod video to even those of us with the hand-eye coordination of a seizure-prone marmoset on crank?

So we've got some good news and some sort of alarming news; which do you want first? Okay, well, seeing as this whole soap opera thing we're doing here is essentially time-delayed one-way communication and we can't possibly hear your response, we're going to assume you just said "good news," which works out just splendidly, because if we went the other way and did the sort-of-alarming stuff first, it wouldn't make much sense. Oh, the joys of assuming audience response; you are but puppets to us. Mere PUPPETS! MWAAAHAHAHAHAAAA!

Sorry, where were we? Oh, right-- the good news. Socks!

That's right, it's November, and just like Steve said, iPod Socks have finally surfaced for preorder at the Apple Store. A six-pack will run you $29, as announced (that's less than five bucks per sock!), and you get one each in grey, orange, pink, blue, green, and purple. Preorder now and Apple will get your socks in the mail by early December, meaning you'll have them in plenty of time to make them someone's stocking-stuffer-- or, indeed, to use as stockings to stuff. We wouldn't recommend the latter use, though, because festive though they are, they're also pretty small, and you'd really be short-changing yourself in the loot department. No one's wedging a two-pound BEEF LOG® Lite in one of these dainty lil' 'Pod-cozies.

The slightly alarming news is that we've received mail from a disquieting number of viewers who saw the socks appear at the Apple Store today and expressed their utter shock at discovering that iPod Socks are a real thingy and not just a whimsical joke that Steve told to loosen up the crowd at that last music event speech he gave. Funny how we never thought that for a second, because in hindsight, yeah, it could have been a joke, couldn't it? But it wasn't, and the fact that so many people thought it was doesn't exactly augur well for sales of iPod Socks this holiday season. If more of the messages had a tone of "pleasantly surprised" instead of "what sort of mental defective is going to spend $29 on five socks for his iPod?" then we might not feel quite so edgy, but they didn't, so we do.

Personally, we think the socks are nifty; you can pick a new color at whim, they're dead easy to wash, and they're a simple way to protect your iPod without encasing it in a contraption that robs it of its simple lines. Then again, we're so deeply mired within the Reality Distortion Field, we'll buy pretty much anything with an Apple logo on it, so maybe we're not the best ones to judge.

Then again, faithful viewer Miche Doherty notes that, at broadcast time, iPod Socks hadn't yet shown up at the Apple Store UK-- which implies that Apple, at least, is forecasting huge iPod Sock demand and, just as with the iPod mini, the rest of the world is going to have to wait a few months while Apple works furiously to fill backorders here in the States. See, miniPods were constrained by a short supply of teensy third party hard drives, but iPod Sock production is limited entirely by craftsmanship; our sources report that each and every Sock is hand-knitted to perfection by a tiny magical weaving gnome that Apple captured in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, who unfortunately can't crank out more than about 60 a day. (Yes, he's magic, but he also goofs off a lot. It's a real problem.) So get those preorders in early, people; the last thing you want is to wait six months for socks.