Meanwhile, the Apple Store's not the only thing that apparently experienced "technical difficulties" this morning; faithful viewer Danny Cohen was just the first of many to inform us that the iTunes Music Store had gone a little crazy, too. Reportedly all the song links were completely hosed, so that clicking on, for example, "Alice Cooper" would bring up the page for "Clay Aiken" instead. Well, okay, maybe that wasn't such a good example, since Alice and Clay are actually the same person, but you get the point: it's fixed now, but for hours the iTMS was in a state of utter chaos. So: wrong pricing promoted at the Apple Store, the iTMS in shambles... what could possibly have brought about such pandemonium at One Infinite Loop?

The answer will chill you to the very depths of your soul: Apple employees are shaky right now because they're coping with news of their imminent demise!

No kidding! Faithful viewer Lani Moo tipped us off to new article in TechNewsWorld by the Criswell of our generation, analyst and frequent AtAT guest star Rob Enderle. Yes, folks, Rob's at it again, but this time, instead of predicting Apple's switch to Intel processors by the end of 2003, he's just flat-out predicting Apple's doom-- presumably because Apple still hasn't gone x86 (and 2003 is almost over-- good lord, he was right!!).

Actually, though, to be perfectly accurate, this time Enderle's just the messenger: the actual prediction of Apple's doom comes from a panel of know-it-alls at Comdex last week. Enderle, who was moderating (gosh, what an astonishing coincidence), asked the panel which companies "would be dead... in the future," and the answer wasn't good: Sun, Novell... and Apple.

Of course, before you go stick your head in the microwave, there are a few mitigating factors to consider, here. For one thing, the panel consisted entirely of four bigwigs from Microsoft, Oracle, Apache, and the Yankee Group, and frankly, we can't think of a single reason to believe that any of those particular entities has any insight whatsoever into why Apple is still around in the first place. (On a side note, with Microsoft representatives publicly predicting Apple's death, are we really supposed to believe that the company is planning to keep developing Office-- or anything else-- for our platform? Puh-leaze.) All four panelists felt that it was "a given" that any company that "didn't run on the x86 architecture" is "likely gone." In other words, that panel was about as corporate-IT as it gets, and the odds that anyone on it "gets" why Apple keeps making money and generating fierce customer loyalty are next to nil. Throw Enderle into the mix and you've got five peas in a very beige pod.

Lastly, even if the panelists are correct, Enderle reports that he merely asked the panel to list the companies that would die "in the future"; apparently he didn't set a date. So Apple may well have another five billion years of life left in it-- more, if it gets its space ark done before the sun goes nova.

Listen, we've been hearing "experts" predict Apple's impending doom for the entire past decade, and we bet the doomsaying goes back even farther than that. We actually wish Enderle had asked which companies would be gone in, say, twenty years; we'd have made a friendly wager with him that Apple would still be around come November 2023, and the loser would buy the winner one of those flying cars that'll be all the rage that year. We can always use another free flying car.