If you're now harboring an honest-to-goshness concern about Steve's health based solely on a couple of throwaway comments about his weight loss and memory lapses, congratulations-- you're officially a worrywart, and you qualify to receive an attractive certificate suitable for framing that identifies you as such a creature. Be careful, though; the local union can revoke your certification if you're not also sufficiently clenched over Apple's future as a consumer electronics company and the uncertain fate of the Macintosh platform. Not feeling quite spooked enough about Apple's recent music-over-Macs priority to conform to worrywart union regulations? Fret not (or, rather, fret more)-- perhaps we can help.

See, when someone is a true worrywart at heart (like you so obviously are), the teensiest hint of impending doom is all it takes to get those stomachs ulcerating at championship speeds. So take a gander at what faithful viewer Steve Merrylees forwarded to us-- it's a Guardian Unlimited interview with Steve Jobs (or rather, a collection of unused excerpts from one) in which His Steveness sings a number of familiar refrains: if you're not selling iPods, there's no money to be made in the download business; every player that isn't an iPod sucks; nobody wants subscription-based streaming music; Sony is way cool.

Nothing especially worrisome there, right? But nestled among the standard press soundbites is a single admission that ought to get your stomach churning; when asked whether he still believes that the iPod might bring some admirers over to the Mac from their Wintel roots, as Apple had originally predicted, Steve says "No. We brought the iPod to Windows. That was a big decision. That was basically a decision not to use the iPod to drive people to Macs... the majority of iPods we sell are used on Windows." Wow, not a lot of wiggle room in that statement, huh?

Now, apart from the cringeworthy notion that most of the people you see out there walking around with iPods are occasionally plugging the poor things into Wintels ("Unclean! Unclean!"), if you think about this whole "not using the iPod to sell Macs" factor for a minute, you'll soon start to obsess over the fact that Apple has made a conscious decision that selling more iPods is preferable to selling more Macs-- in other words, Apple would much rather have over 50% of the portable music player market than perhaps an extra half-a-percentage point when the next Mac market share numbers get published. Sensible? Sure. But when you drop that whole thing into context alongside Apple's recent statement that music is its number one priority, Steve's "big decision" starts to take on slightly sinister undertones.

So. Is it working? Has your gifted worrywart brain already converted all of this info into a nagging anxiety that Apple's just going to let the Mac stagnate, crumble, and wallow in the dust of what might have been? Good! Now just remember to keep that furrowed brow and those lost-looking eyes the next time your union rep comes around, and you'll be all set.

Oh, and the sky is falling, too.

Ha! Made you look!