When the iPod was introduced last October, we recall being completely, utterly, 110% sure that Apple priced it at $399 purely with the aim of bleeding as much cash as possible out of us poor "early adopters" with impulse control issues during the holiday shopping season; we fully expected a price drop for the "regular people," perhaps to $299 or so once the feeding frenzy ended in January. But January came and went, and the iPod remained stubbornly at $399. Then March rolled around, and with it came Macworld Tokyo. Ah-ha! Surely that event would bring an iPod price drop, right? Wrong. Once again, the original iPod stayed at $399, while Apple introduced a 10 GB model at the even less affordable price point of $499. Sheesh, whose scrollwheel do we have to spin to get a cheaper iPod around here?

Well, wonder no longer, folks, because now that the iPod has been shipping for just over five months, Apple has finally seen fit to toss all you starving digital music lovers a frickin' bone-- in the form of a new promotion called "Music on. $100 off." Yes, as that oh-so-clever title implies, you can now pick up an iPod at a net cost of $100 less than the standard retail price, which means that you'll effectively pay $299 for the "iPod Classic" and $399 for the new 10 GB version. That's still not exactly the sort of purchase that qualifies as an impulse buy in the check-out lane, unless you're the sort of person who's been hearing the phrase "trust fund" all his or her life and can therefore toss a $400 portable music device in the cart along with two packs of Juicy Fruit and a box of Tic Tacs-- but it is a price drop, of sorts.

We say "of sorts," of course, because there are a couple of catches. First of all, in keeping with the grand Apple promo tradition, that $100 off is actually in the form of a mail-in rebate-- which means that it won't do you much good if you can't scrape together the funds to buy the thing at full price in the first place. Worse yet, even if you do manage to hock your kneecaps or something for the up-front cash, you're still not getting that hundred bucks back unless you somehow raise and fork over at least $799 more-- for a new Mac. Yep, the rebate requires that you buy both an iPod and any new Mac between now and June 30th. You don't necessarily have to buy them together, but still, this is one of those irritating scenarios in which you have to spend roughly triple what you originally considered to be too much money in the first place before you can get those hundred clams back in the mail.

On the plus side, of course, if you can find some way to pull it off, you'll wind up with the iPod of your dreams plus a spiffy new Mac-- and a $100 check in your mailbox in six to eight weeks. It's actually a super deal for newbies and fed-up Wintel sufferers who are finally looking to join the Mac community, so we're not going to complain. Still, it's not much help to the financially challenged who are jonesing for an iPod. Pretty much all we can do about that is mention three things: 1) the $339 refurb iPod in the "Special Deals" section of the Apple Store; 2) the $369 iPod available via the Apple Store for Education; and 3) eBay. Or maybe just hang in there a bit longer; since this promotion ends on June 30th, maybe real price drops will accompany the 20 GB iPod that'll probably surface soon thereafter-- that is, unless Apple prices the 5/10/20 GB line at $399/$499/$699 just to annoy you.