A moment of silence, please, for those poor investors who took their own lives today; AAPL dropped a whopping $1.39 a share in regular trading, triggering mass suicides among small investors who simply couldn't come to terms with the fact that the paper gain their 100 shares scored on Monday had been trimmed back from the price of a 40 GB iPod to that of a measly iPod mini. Bodies plummeted from high windows as hundreds of people jumped rather than live life with 9,000 fewer songs in their pocket. (Pity they didn't hold off a little while longer; AAPL's up 45 cents in after-hours trading, putting their gains back in reach of a 20 GB model. Won't the next-of-kin be pleased?)

So what do you think, is this the beginning of the end? Because we just don't see it, frankly; even if the iPod were the only thing that Apple had going for it right now, there's still a month's worth of holiday sales to rack up and the expected launch of those rumored flash-based models just a couple of weeks after that. And Apple has so much more to cheer about-- including stuff that ought to appeal to Wall Street and not just Mac geeks like us. The most recent rash of analyst upgrades was prompted largely by reports that demand for the iMac G5 is beating expectations so far, lending more credence to that recent survey which showed iPod-owning Windows users switching to Macs in almost frighteningly high percentages. On top of that, the iMac is showing up on a lot more "Best Holiday Gifts" lists than we expected, all of which adds up to a massive wad of cash sweeping into Apple's vaults.

Check it out: Fortune has highlighted the iMac G5 as one of the "Best Products of the Year" in the category of Electronics-- and if you've been wondering just who has deep enough pockets to buy iMacs as Christmas gifts, we're guessing that if they're out there, they read Fortune. Meanwhile, faithful viewer John Haytol tells us that the Washington Times has gone a step further, and informed its readership that the iMac G5 is officially its "Computer of the Year." Sure, the honor is diluted slightly by the fact that the runner-up is a (shudder) $599 eMachines box, but c'mon, good press is good press.

So between all this praise-laden press, the increasing trend of iPod users joining the ranks of Macdom, and the irresistible lure of the iPod reeling suckers into the Apple retail stores (and in front of the iMac) by the busload, the iMac G5 might wind up being a bigger story than the iPod when the holiday sales figures are finally released. Not in a units sense, of course; obviously Apple isn't going to sell four million iMacs this quarter. And probably not in a revenue sense either, simply because four million iPods is just too tough to outweigh. But we're gearing up to hear about a significant market share boost thanks to the iMac's popularity, and since Macs are higher-margin items and still Apple's primary source of revenue, we bet that Wall Street will respond favorably. After all, Apple's practically got the digital music market sewn up right now; the room for serious growth is in the Mac market, and any measurable sign of a real Windows-to-Mac migration might well tack beaucoup de bucks onto AAPL's share price.

That's pure speculation, mind you, so don't go blaming us if we wind up way off base. But one thing we're reasonably comfortable predicting is some solid iMac G5 sales action before the year's up. Whether or not that will translate into AAPL bounding to hitherto unseen heights remains to be seen, but personally, we're guessing that if those dearly departed investors' heirs hold onto their 100 shares, before long they'll have a paper gain that can cover the cost of a top-of-the-line iPod photo-- or heck, maybe even an iMac itself. Dare to dream.

Whoa, way to miss a forecast! It's one thing to promise a product release a full year in advance and fail to deliver due to technical hurdles tripping up a third-party supplier; sure, we were all disappointed when Uncle Steve's "3 GHz within a year" promise fell over and caught fire, but we all understood: after all, it was IBM who couldn't hack the 90-nanometer thing, which was hardly Apple's fault, and at least Apple had the decency to tell us that it wasn't going to hit Steve's target date a full three weeks before the deadline arrived. That's all totally reasonable, in our book. But c'mon, folks-- what's with the Canadian launch of the iTunes Music Store?

As you no doubt recall, Apple promised a Canadian iTMS rollout in November, and it certainly didn't make that promise a whole year in advance; we remember it like it was yesterday, because it practically was yesterday-- it happened just five weeks ago, on October 26th. But by our calendar (which just happens to be Apple's, too), it's now officially December, and as faithful viewer littlemisspixelpants confirms, north of the border, the iTMS is still nowhere to be seen. When a company misses a one-month launch window that it publicly sets for itself five weeks before the window closes, you have to assume that something went really, really wrong.

What's especially interesting about the iTMS November no-show (well, interesting to us, anyway-- the Canadians probably just find it galling) is that just a few days ago, Apple was still insisting that a November launch was guaranteed. See, the Canucks get Thanksgiving out of the way back in early October, so this past Thursday, while the AtAT staff was attempting to achieve a profound state of mashed potato-induced hibernation, the Globe and Mail was busy confirming with Apple that the iTMS would still spread north in November. Company spokesperson Natalie Kerris was quoted as saying "it's still November; we'll launch in November." Except, of course, that it's now no longer November, and needless to say, they didn't.

So what happened? It's just conjecture, but we expect some sort of last-minute licensing snafu (yes, just like the Irish one) is the likeliest explanation for the delay, since it's always been licensing issues and not technical ones holding iTMS launches back. Plus, AppleInsider reports that Apple's been running iTMS TV commercials up north since "the third week of November," which certainly implies that Apple's been good to go for at least that long and fully expected to be able to flip the switch. Indeed, we're sure that Apple isn't crazy about having blown the cash to run TV ads "in heavy rotation" for the past couple of weeks without an actual service up and running to separate viewers from their money.

Here's hoping that, whatever the disagreement might be, it gets hammered out quickly, because right now literally dozens of Canadians are beginning to think that Steve Jobs and his spokespeople are a pack of dirty, dirty liars. Hey, wait a minute-- Apple said it would "launch the iTunes Music Store in Canada in November." But did it ever specify which year? Hmmmm, we don't like where this is going...

Wow, isn't it amazing how quickly a company can move when it finally realizes it's getting the living snot kicked out of it? Barely five months ago, Sony debuted its tardy response to the iPod, the NW-HD1 Network Walkman; reviews of the device's design were largely positive, but for some reason Sony had decided to ship the thing with support for exactly one digital music format: the company's own proprietary ATRAC3. That was a deal-breaker for most people, since the NW-HD1 couldn't play standard MP3s, by far the most prevalent format out there, nor could it play music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store or any of the zillion lesser Windows Media-based services; for downloads, it was tethered to Sony's own Connect service, which Sony itself euphemistically describes as "not an entrenched recognizable service." (Sure, the iPod ties you to the iTMS, but at least the iTMS is good.) Consequently, consumers stayed away in droves and the NW-HD1 proved roughly as popular as Baskin-Robbins's experimental ice cream flavor "Chock Full o' Haggis 'n' Navy Beans."

A few months later, Sony had a chance to reflect on a quarter's worth of sales charitably described as "wildly disappointing" (and more accurately described as "a blunt instrument to the face")-- and not just NW-HD1 sales, either, but those of the company's flash-based players, too, which were also ATRAC-only devices. The outcome? Two months ago Sony finally announced that it was finally going to break down and add MP3 support to its flash-based products... but, inexplicably, not to the NW-HD1; it was, however, "considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices" at some point in the future.

Well, evidently the future is now: it's barely two months later, but faithful viewer frozen tundra tipped us off to a Reuters article reporting that Sony has just introduced the NW-HD3. What happened to the NW-HD2, you ask? Apparently we blinked and missed it, although it seems we didn't miss much: according to I4U, the NW-HD2 came out in September and was just the NW-HD1 reissued in miniPod Silver, miniPod Blue, and miniPod Pink. Apparently before doing something as drastic as supporting MP3, Sony just wanted to make sure that the NW-HD1's crappy sales weren't due to its color. They weren't.

Anyway, as far as we can tell, the NW-HD3 is the same ol' NW-HD1 and -HD2 (complete with the same criminally misleading storage and battery claims), only with five available colors and MP3 support tacked on. So in less than two months, Sony's gone from "considering" adding MP3 support to its hard disk players to actually shipping a new product with MP3 playback built-in. Smacks of desperation, doesn't it? Still, since the NW-HD1's lack of MP3 support was really the single biggest factor that drove consumers screaming from the stores, maybe there'll be some real competition now. The NW-HD3 will be available in the UK "before Christmas" (although obviously not much before) for £249-- the same price as an iPod U2 Special Edition, but £30 more expensive than a plain vanilla 20 GB iPod. So, any bets on which product will finish out in front? (Again?)