Yeesh, it's 2004 all over again. Remember when all the rumors about Apple's flash-based iPod indicated that the company was building up massive supplies of the device ahead of its debut at Macworld Expo so as to avoid the weeks- and even months-long delays and frustrated demand that marked the introduction of the iPod mini at last year's show? Well, TechWeb News reports that iPod shuffles, which were available "immediately" after the Stevenote, are now showing lead times of up to four weeks on new orders at Apple's own online store. According to AppleInsider, analyst Steve Milunovich over at Merrill Lynch isn't surprised; he figures that Apple will be facing "strong demand" that will "outstrip the available supply" of "1.2 to 1.5 million units per quarter." And since legend has it that one Apple retail store sold its entire stock of 2,000 units within four hours (and since Apple is the long-reigning King of Unfulfilled Demand), we suppose we shouldn't be surprised.

So yeah, we're looking at a product backlog approaching miniPodesque proportions, but the good news is that people are still ordering the bejeezus out of the lil' buddies. Consider sales at Amazon.com, for instance; faithful viewer Bill Palmer (yes, that Bill Palmer) notes over at iPodGarage that the iPod shuffle currently heads Amazon's list of the top "Early Adopter" electronics products, which is updated daily and "based entirely on purchase patterns." The 1 GB iPod shuffle is nestled snugly in first place (and has been for at least a couple of days), while the 512 MB iPod shuffle is perched in the Number Two spot. Not too shabby, especially since no other MP3 player even managed to crack the top ten.

However, it gets even better. Bill leaves out a few interesting details-- such as the fact that while Apple's two iPod shuffles are numbers 1 and 2 on the list, the iPod shuffle Sport Case is number 3. And the iPod shuffle Armband is number 5. Oh, and hey, lookee here; what's this at number 6? Why, it's the iPod shuffle Dock Connector. Yes, kiddies, fully half of the top ten (and better yet, five of the top six) "Early Adopters" electronics products at Amazon are iPod shuffles or other Apple products directly related to them.

Meanwhile, the only non-Apple players to crack the top twenty are Creative's 512 MB MuVo TX FM and MuVo Slim 512 MB Silver, which show up at numbers 11 and 19, respectively. Gee, wasn't the CEO of Creative the one who recently told Channel NewsAsia that the iPod shuffle was "a big let-down" because it's "five generations older" than Creative's offerings and that "the whole industry will just laugh at it" because it's a "four-year-old product"? And didn't he say that the iPod shuffle is therefore "a non-starter to begin with"? Because it's funny, but based on Amazon's Early Adopter rankings, we're getting the distinct sense that the shufflePod isn't just starting, but starting strong-- and way stronger than Creative's own offerings, despite the fact that Creative's players are available right now, while the shufflePods are labeled "in stock soon" and "order now to get in line."

Frankly, we can't wait to hear how Creative-Dude is going to spin things when the first quarterly sales numbers are released. Backpedaling? "What I meant to say was..."? Demands for a recount? Or will he just bust out crying? Place your bets now, people!

As Mac users, we've long outgrown the obsolete metric of market share as a measurement of platform health and corporate viability, right? After all, quarterly market share numbers include the zillions of PCs sold for use as cash registers and machines sold into other markets in which Apple doesn't compete, so those percentages are always artificially small. Moreover, there's the old comparison to car manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW; they have Apple-sized market share and do all right. Apple's the only computer company other than Dell consistently making a profit on its PC business-- a business with far smaller market share than IBM's, we might add, in light of IBM dumping its PC business as a lost cause. So again, as Mac users, we're totally at peace with Apple's 2ish percent market share.

Sure we are. And Steve Ballmer is a paragon of personal hygiene-- not to mention a model of grace and poise as the latest dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet.

The fact is, no matter how many rationalizations we may come up with or how valid they may in fact be, a little part of us dies every time we see that Apple's market share is still below 3 percent. Sure, Apple may be making money and the Mac may be the best it's ever been, but the fact that Wintels outsell Macs 50 to 1 is a fundamentally abominable state that heralds, at best, the imminent collapse of Western civilization-- and at worst, the coming of a thousand-year Reign of Darkness that will end only with humanity's death at its own blade of ignorance and corruption. (Or something.) That's why we were so glad to see that, according to the Associated Press, IDC says that "worldwide shipments of personal computers grew 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter" compared to the same quarter a year earlier-- not because it signals some tech-based growth in an economy that hasn't given anyone much to cheer about, but because it indicates that Apple's market share is on the rise.

See, you may recall that when Apple announced its best quarterly results ever last week, it noted that it had shipped just over a million Macs in the December quarter, which was its highest reported unit tally in four years and a 26 percent increase from the same quarter in 2003. See where we're going with this, Math Boy? Macs are up 26 percent in the same period that PC shipments overall were only up 13.7 percent-- which means Mac sales growth is outpacing that of the industry, which means that Mac market share must be on the rise.

Before you do a naked dance of thanks to the gods of Tech Justice, though, it's probably worth noting that since the Mac's market share was already so comparatively tiny, any increase is going to look practically negligible. We're far too lazy and easily depressed to look up what IDC or Gartner said Apple's share was in Q4/2003, but our back-of-the-envelope calculations based on Apple's reported Mac shipments and IDC's numbers for quarterly unit sales say it was about 1.83 percent, whereas Apple's share last quarter was roughly 2.03 percent. Two tenths of a percentage point is hardly enough of a change to get naked and greasy over.

Or is it? Because with the Mac mini onboard to draw more Wintel switchers and the iPod shuffle widening the scope of the "halo effect," maybe this is just the start of something very, very big. Why, if Apple fires on all cylinders and everything falls perfectly into place, it's not entirely inconceivable that by this time next year, Apple's share will have even doubled.

To, um, four percent.

You know what? We're just going to sit over here in this dark corner and mope for a while...

Hey, look-- Apple's got an actual fight on its hands! When it sued the unidentified proprietor of Think Secret for posting the company's trade secrets for public consumption, it probably had no idea that said proprietor would turn out to be a nineteen-year-old Harvard undergrad named Nick Ciarelli. That was a win-lose situation, because while Apple might have seen its case turn into an easy win against a young and poorly-defended client, the company's fans and critics alike were less than comfortable with the idea of a multibillion-dollar corporation laying the legal smackdown on an intelligent kid with lots of initiative who was obviously a big Apple fan himself.

But faithful viewer Got Mac informs us that Nick found a lawyer, and not one that advertises on novelty sponges or offers you a free medium one-topping pizza if you lose your case. Nick's mouthpiece is one Terry Gross, of the firm Gross & Belsky LLP, who was reportedly the very first lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, those guys who fight for free speech and privacy rights specifically in the context of electronic media. According to Gross, "Think Secret's reporting is protected by the First Amendment" and "the Supreme Court has said that a journalist cannot be held liable for publishing information that the journalist obtained lawfully." Since Nick "has not used any improper newsgathering techniques," Gross will seek to have the case dismissed "under a California statute which weeds out meritless claims that threaten our First Amendment rights."

To us, Gross's argument sounds at odds with what we've heard about California law prohibiting the publishing of information that the publisher knows to be a trade secret, but hey, that's why we're the smartass drama queens and he's the law-talkin' guy. At least Nick's defense won't be that he was unaware that Mac mini specs and pricing constituted trade secrets in the first place-- although we'd have paid cash money to see the judge's reaction if they'd tried to pull that sort of move. We'd always wanted to see some laugh themselves into a hernia.

Incidentally, we can't help but see this as a lose-lose development for Apple: its target is no longer defenseless, but the company still has to live with the stigma of having been the bully who picked on the precocious college kid. There's nothing like a little PR nightmare to spice up the soup, though, right? And now that Nick has some serious legal guns in his corner, we can all look forward to some pretty sparks flying in the courtroom pretty soon-- assuming that Gross can't deliver on that "immediate dismissal" nonsense. If he can, we're going to be sorely disappointed at having our most promising chance for real courtroom drama yoinked out from under us. In other words, we want Gross to be good... just not too good.

Personally, we suspect that the whole thing will eventually end in a settlement that will practically define the term "nonevent," just because that's the way these things usually go, but can you imagine the stakes if the case goes all the way to a verdict? If Think Secret wins, it'll practically be open season for Apple leaks and we can all chug broken NDAs and insider reports until we puke, then chug some more. If Apple wins, well... let's just say that pre-Expo speculation is going to have to get a lot more "imaginative" in that scenario.