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Those MacUser readers who still smoke - all 12 of you - will probably have noticed that the mandatory health warnings which adorn the packets of your inhalatory poison of choice have been exponentially expanding to the point where there's barely any room left for the brand's logo. This column has considerably more restraint. If it didn't, the words 'ABSOLUTELY NO RESEARCH HAS BEEN UNDERTAKEN IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS COLUMN. IT IS GUARANTEED TO CONTAIN AT LEAST 75% IDLE SPECULATION AND OUTRIGHT INVENTION' would occupy most of this page, which would barely pay your humble servant the cost of the - um - cigarette which I am currently smoking.

This caveat in place, let's consider the vexed question of Apple's relationship with the music industry. There's a folk legend - it may be true, and I hope it is - that the reason Apple Computer was allowed to use the name 'Apple' was that it had cut a deal with the other (and, at the time, way more famous) Apple - The Beatles' record company - to the effect that use of the name was conditional on it never marketing any musical products.

This, according to myth, is why Apple Computer allowed the technologically far less sophisticated Atari to steal a march on it in marketing computers which could be used for music-making. Atari was way more plug-and-play as far as studio work was concerned than Apple's kit of the time, although in other respects it left a lot to be desired.

Time passes, and times

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change. The Apple label barely exists now, except as a retro-nostalgic logo for EMI to imprint onto reissues of the post-1968 Beatle catalogue, and Apple Computer gear makes the company Big Patooties in the studio world. Apple even hit the news the other week because of an excitable rumour that it was about to purchase Universal, one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates, for some unconscionably large sum.

Why would it do that? Well, because of its whizzo scheme to solve the music industry's download headache with its '99 a chune' brainwave; and also because their smallest product is their biggest success. The iPod is, if my spies are to be believed, the gadget for the young to dangle from their belts in cutting-edge circles. For those who like nothing better than to stay up half the night surfing in search of chunes to download as MP3 files, the iPod is mos-def the player of choice: your very own pocket jukebox - only, an old-fashioned jukebox with that many chunes on it would take up most of a city block.

The Internet is a battleground for competing philosophies. Philosophy One, espoused by old hippies, young anarchists and the chronically-averse-to-paying-for-stuff, is 'information wants to be free.' The other, espoused by anyone who relies for any major part of their income on what we can call intellectual property (or, less formally, copyright) is 'information wants to get paid, muhfuh, or you'll be hearing from our lawyers!'

The whole MP3 trip - in its original form - was a manifestation of Philosophy One. Every method by which the music business and its Big Bruv, the film industry - thanks to DVDs, movies are now as digitally vulnerable as sound files - tries to prevent its crown jewels from slithering down the phone lines into our homes, is pure Philosophy Two. It seemed credible that Apple might want to buy Universal: you pay Apple for your iPod, and when you download a tune from the catalogues Universal controls, you pay Apple again. Cheap as chips maybe, but all those chips sure as hell add up.