It kinda makes you wonder whether Apple realizes what it's gotten itself into, don't you think? Even when you take the substantial fan base of drooling Apple mavens and chuck out everybody who wasn't foaming at the mouth for Apple to release a new PDA to replace the Newton, you're still left with a whole lot of drool. And it's worth noting that all of this excess saliva was secreted over a product that not only still doesn't actually exist, but whose existence as even a work-in-progress has also been completely and unambiguously denied by official Apple personnel as high up as Smilin' Phil Schiller. Meanwhile, the very notion of an Apple PDA has been flat-out ridiculed (albeit in supremely diplomatic fashion) by The Stevester Himself-- more than once, in fact.

And then Apple unveiled the iPod-- which is, of course, not a handheld computer per se, but it did reveal that Apple wasn't religiously opposed to creating consumer electronics in a handheld form factor. Things got even more interesting when Apple shipped the iPod 1.1 software, which allows iPod owners to tote their contact data along on their shiny little music thingies. Suddenly Apple's a lot closer to PDA territory than the company's "PDAs? No one uses 'em!" stance would imply.

But remember those drooling fans? Well, they're not planning to wait. Faithful viewer Jeff Duran pointed out a Wired article all about how people are hacking the 'Pod to do more than just play music. There are programs to upload and view news headlines from the 'net, ones to store freeform text snippets, ones to transfer calendar events and schedules, etc. Sure, the 'Pod may lack any sort of reasonable PDA input system (we don't even want to think about entering text with the scroll wheel), but until Apple releases a PDA of its own, iPod fans are having fun pushing their players in zany and useful new directions.

But it was faithful viewer Ryan Cousineau who pointed out one tidbit that we had missed: apparently Apple went and Steved the PodMate! For the uninitiated, the PodMate was a nifty hardware hack introduced at last January's Expo by those evil geniuses at Griffin Technology; when connected to an iPod's headphone jack, it allows said iPod to function as a universal remote control. Many's the night since then that we've fallen asleep smiling, eagerly awaiting the day when we could control our TiVo with our PodMate-enabled iPods.

Unfortunately, according to Wired, Griffin "was planning to sell it, but withdrew it from the market at Apple's request." Sounds to us that Apple is at least open to the idea of the iPod evolving into a PDA, but Steve draws the line at letting the iPod turn into something that controls the boob tube. Somebody needs to sit down with that man and help him get his priorities straight...