Holy Linda Blair with the split pea soup, Batman, what did Apple eat to prompt such a copious disgorgement of new software over the past day or two? In addition to the aforementioned Mac OS X 10.3.5 Update, the company also spat up a standalone Security Update 2004-08-09 (for Jaguar users), iSync 1.5 (which supports more phones), Java 1.4.2 Update 1 (which "improves stability, memory usage, and correctness"), and DVD Studio Pro 3.0.1 (which improves stability, compile time, and compatibility). On top of that, Apple also shipped Motion and introduced "Production Suite," a discounted bundle of Motion, Final Cut Pro, and DVD Studio Pro. After horking up that much software, the company should really try to settle its stomach with a little music. Luckily, it's got a ton of tunes to choose from.

That's right, folks, we're glossing over the details of all that new software through the deft use of a single barf joke. (Don't try this at home, kiddies; we're professionals.) Why? Because point release updates, bundles of existing software, and the shipment of previously announced new products are all ratings poison to an audience of drama fiends, so we're shoving all that aside in favor of harping on Apple's other press release-- the one about the iTunes Music Store finally topping a million available songs in its catalog. There's something inherently dramatic about reaching a round-number milestone-- c'mon, you watch your car's odometer roll over to the next multiple of 10,000 just like the rest of us-- and our audience will not be denied.

Well, until you start asking for Popsicles again. Those are ours, dammit. They're an essential component of the production process.

So anyway, a million songs; pretty nifty, right? And Apple makes a big thing about how this makes the iTMS "the first and only online digital music service to offer consumers a million song catalog"-- the key word being "consumers," we suppose, which may leave OD2/Loudeye out of the equation. See, those guys technically offer their catalog to companies who want to slap together, say, the Oxy® No-Zit Hit Palace or whatever, because everyone knows that these days any company without a downloadable music web site may as well be bartering twigs for pebbles around that new-fangled invention they call "fire." Regardless, OD2 recently talked smack about how it's going to be the "biggest Internet music service in the world" by having 1.3 million songs in its catalog "later this year"-- but apparently "later" isn't here yet, so Apple's claims seems to be legit no matter which way you slice it.

That said, Apple is decidedly vague about which consumers, if any, actually have access to the iTMS's entire million-plus-song catalog. We already know for a fact that the various European stores offer local content that's not available to users of any other localized version, and they also lack a lot of the tunes that are available in the U.S. store; meanwhile, the U.S. store can't access any of the European-localized stuff, either. So when Apple says it has "more than one million songs available," is it referring to a grand total only completely accessible to a U.S. resident who summers in France, winters in Germany, and occasionally stops in at Old Blighty for a Quake 3 deathmatch weekend with the Queen?

Maybe not; while The Register confirms that the million-plus tracks aren't available to UK customers, it reports that we here in the U.S. do have access to a full seven digits' worth of downloady goodness. That implies that the total total, i.e. all songs sold by any iTMS in any country, is decidedly larger; we wonder if it even eclipses that future 1.3 million that OD2 was being so snotty about?

While you're pondering that, if you're living in the U.S., grab $990,000 and start downloading. You've got a lot of work to do.