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It's hardly a likely coincidence that Apple Computer chose to unveil its new iPod digital music machine two days before Microsoft's official launch of its new Windows XP operating system. The iPod won't block much of XP's "Ray of Light" hype, but it does make a corporate philosophical statement distinct the one Microsoft is presenting, and should help boost Apple Macintosh computer sales. How so?

The sleek, stainless steel, pocket-sized iPod is not just another portable MP3 player. Apple's new device promises to redefine the category, with its ability to store 1,000 or more songs on its 5 GB hard disk, downloading them from a Mac through its lightning fast FireWire connector in about 10 minutes for a full load, or the contents of one CD in just 10 seconds, and play for 10 hours on a single battery charge.

With its automatic battery charging through the FireWire cable while connected to the "mother ship" Mac (there is also a dedicated AC adapter for charging); two inch, 160-by-128-pixel resolution, backlit LCD display; FireWire-based syncing with iTunes 2 song libraries and playlists on the host Mac; 20 minute skip protection, and 32MB memory cache, iPod has raised the bar for portable digital music players.

And the punch line is that iPod is really a computer accessory rather than a freestanding device. It requires iTunes 2 for support -- and iTunes 2 runs only on Macintoshes, indeed fairly recent Macs that can support the most recent versions of the Mac operating system, OS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.1. It isn't available at all for Windows.

Which has some sour-grapes pundits in the Windows-oriented tech press grousing that this limits potential iPod users to the approximately seven million owners of late model Macintosh computers. But surely that is by design. Apple obviously hopes that the iPod will prove one more enticement to Windows-users to upgrade to a Mac, and for owners of older Macs to trade up to a new machine.

The fact that iPod is primarily an MP3-oriented machine (although it also supports WAV and AIFF music files, and indeed can function as an external hard drive to store computer documents, files and applications if you wish) is noteworthy as well, since Microsoft is dropping built-in MP3 support from Windows XP in favor of its proprietary but much less-popular Windows Media Player format. Apple is betting that MP3s, which soared in popularity during the Napster interlude, and continues to thrive on dozens of peer-to-peer file sharing networks like Gnutella nad Freenet that sprang up to fill the void left when a US court shut Napster down last spring, will maintain its dominant digital music file format status.

As Dan Knight over at Low End Mac noted yesterday:

"On October 23, 2001, Microsoft officially released Windows XP. Apple unveiled the iPod, a powerful MP3 player. One of the great drawbacks of Windows XP -- and there are many -- is that it does not support MP3s. Microsoft wants Windows users to stop using the preferred format for music piracy (ignoring the fact that a lot of MP3s are not pirated) and force Windows users to adopt the Windows Media Player (WiMP).

"Without saying it in so many words, Apple has embraced the popular MP3 format and promised continued support by releasing iTunes 2 and the iPod. Microsoft wants to take away your MP3s; Apple wants you to enjoy them."

Of course, Apple is obliged to tread softly with MP3 support, since the format is spectacularly unpopular with the recording industry. While Microsoft is cooperating with the Recording Institute Association of America (RIAA) in building digital copyright management (DCRM) into, Windows XP, the Mac OS has no such protocols, and iPod could be characterized as a digital music pirate's dream machine.

Apple notes in its technical specifications for iPod that : "iPod and iTunes are for legal or rightholder-authorized copying only. Don't steal music." Apple CEO Steve Jobs was quoted by the New York Times commenting that the company had taken some steps to protect against piracy in its device. But savvy Mac-users quickly responded that those are very easily worked around. Mr. Jobs, and honcho of Pixar, is of course heavily connected with the motion picture industry, another foe of unauthorized file sharing, so he has to keep his bases covered on that front.

As Moore's MailBag correspondent Josef Schneider noted yesterday:

"[Apple's] protestations may be genuine, or they may be as sincere as Claude Raines's police inspector in Casablanca:

"I'm shocked! Shocked to find that people are buying our products to use for illegal file trading!"

"Either way," says my Josef, "Microsoft will soon learn that people, particularly young people, aren't going to have anything to do with an operating system that includes DCRM. File sharing is one of the reasons they buy a computer in the first place. Many of the more computer-savvy among them will... switch to Macintosh for iTunes, FireWire, the iPod... "

Of course, they'll have to pony up a hefty$399 for the iPod experience, which makes the new Apple device a bit pricey. Rio's Nomad MP 3 player has a 6 GB hard disk and sells for US$249, while the US$369 Archos Jukebox 6000 has a whopping 20 GB of storage. But neither of those units have FireWire, which is 30-40 times faster in real world performance compared with their USB interfaces.

While the iPod is a relatively expensive MP3 player, and an expensive external 5 GB FireWire hard drive, as a combination of both, it's not such a bad value. At least Apple is hoping consumers will see it that way. And not doing Windows, at least initially, is a feature, not a bug.

Charles W. Moore

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