(sniff... sniff...) Hey, does it smell a little... Redmondy in here to you? Weird, right? We know-- we always use Glade PlugIns Scented Oil in Cupertino fragrance (it's kinda like oranges and soy lattes), but something here has definitely got a distinct Gatesian twang to its whiff.

Check behind the fridge.

Oh, wait-- never mind, faithful viewer Lunar Obverse just found it. Turns out that it's Apple's vaguely Microsoftian iTunes installer for Windows. He just got email from MusicMatch, the folks whose software the Windows iPod used to ship with, and they state in no uncertain terms that installing iTunes on a Wintel that's already running their own jukebox software will somehow result in that software becoming totally unable to sync with the iPod any longer. It's the sort of thing that Microsoft's lawyers might have referred to during the federal antitrust trial as an "eerie coincidence."

Says the email, "DO NOT install iTunes for Window on your PC if you are using Musicmatch Jukebox and wish to continue using Musicmatch Jukebox with your iPod." Simple, right? But what if their email came too late? After all, there were a million downloads of iTunes for Windows as of two weeks ago, so MusicMatch is clearly more than fashionably late to the party with its dire preventative warnings. Well, things get a little hairier if you've already installed iTunes and now you want to go back to using MusicMatch to sync your iPod for some reason (like, say, you ate some bad fish and the toxins are clouding your judgment). To re-enable iPod syncing in MusicMatch, just follow the following eleventy-seventy simple steps! (This is verbatim from the email, mind you.)

• Disconnect the iPod from your computer if it is still connected.
• Double click on 'My Computer'
• Double click on 'Control Panel'
• Open "Add or Remove Programs'
• Select and uninstall 'iTunes'
• Select and uninstall the 'iPod for Windows' item
• Select and uninstall the 'Musicmatch iPod Plugin' item
• Select and uninstall the 'iPod System Software Update' or any other iPod related items that might be listed
• Select and uninstall 'Musicmatch Jukebox'
• Close the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel
• Restart your computer
• Navigate to the '\Program Files\iPod' directory
• Delete the contents of the iPod directory by dragging the files to the Recycle Bin and then emptying the Recycle Bin
• Navigate to the '\program files\Musicmatch\ Musicmatch Jukebox\' folder
• Delete the files, but not the folder, in the Musicmatch Jukebox folder
• Reinstall Musicmatch Jukebox from the installation CD that came with your iPod or download the iPod software from the following URL: http://newsletter.musicmatch.com/rdr/ ?Rn187230301,1872303,38861847,287230301
• When finished, reboot your computer
• When the computer finishes rebooting, connect the iPod to your system
• Open Musicmatch Jukebox

Could it possibly be any easier? Where's the challenge? Indeed, we're a little disappointed there are only two restarts involved-- surely it could have been at least four, with a little more effort thrown in. Which is, of course, why we love Windows so much in the first place.

So, yeah, it does seem a little slimy that installing iTunes de-iPodifies MusicMatch, doesn't it? Especially if Apple's installer doesn't warn you about it beforehand, and we've seen no indication that it does. Granted, you'd have to be one seriously twisted iPod owner to try iTunes and then decide that MusicMatch is a better companion for your little white-'n'-silver buddy, but who knows what goes through the minds of Wintellians? Maybe they're always walking around in Bad Fish Shock. It would explain a lot.

And before you start lambasting Apple for pulling a stunt like this, c'mon... the people affected by this are Windows users-- they're used to this kind of treatment. Obviously they thrive on it, or they'd have ditched Microsoft years ago. Heck, crippling a competing product was probably the only way Apple could have gotten an ounce of respect from these folks in the first place. In fact, we think Apple probably missed a golden opportunity to win some serious admiration from the Windows community; instead of simply removing MusicMatch's ability to sync with the iPod, iTunes should also have deleted MusicMatch entirely, installed spyware, inexplicably disabled a random piece of system hardware, reformatted any writable volumes not containing iTunes itself, and then emailed itself to everyone in the user's Outlook address book. Oh, and it should have cost thirty bucks. More, with technical support.