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Yes, I know I was asking for trouble, but curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it, there it was. Installed, eschewing the garish XP colour scheme and looking for all the world like a native Mac application.

Apple invented the iPod in the hope it would attract more users to the Mac, and for a while it seemed to be working. It's still the world's best-selling music player, but the mathematicians at Apple worked out that for it to be truly ubiquitous it had to run on not just the best platform, as it already did, but also the most common - Windows. The extra revenue brought in by increased iPod sales would far outstrip the potential sales of extra Macs. To this end, it supplemented the regular FireWire cable with a USB2 option and after a brief dalliance with the inferior Musicmatch software upgraded all who wanted it to iTunes for Windows, complete with streaming media, network sharing and track ranking.

Of course, that opened up the iTunes Store

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to Windows users, too - in the US, at least. Perhaps that was the intention all along. Or perhaps it was a side effect. Either way, it's good news for us Mac users, isn't it? If it bolsters the Cupertino coffers it'll keep the corporate cashflow fluid.

But with every silver lining there's a cloud. In bringing iTunes to the PC, Apple could have provided those stalwart Windows devotees just the excuse they need never to look at a Mac again. Why? The same reason my iPod has a new best friend: cost.

My iBook, you see, is packed with ripped tunes. All fully legal, of course - I can produce a corresponding CD for each and every one. The trouble is, I'm fast running out of space to put my documents and... erm... art downloaded from the Web. The same could be said for my PC, but that is easier and cheaper to upgrade. Granted, if you have a Power Mac it's no harder, but for those of us with an eMac, iMac or portable alternative, digging around inside the case simply isn't that much fun.

So it's time to say goodbye to iTunes on my Mac. I'll use it for listening to radio streams, but as soon as I slot a new, cheap drive into my iTunes-friendly PC I'll zap the music library.

I hope that I'm in a minority there, and still further that what Kenny predicted in this slot a few issues back will come true - that there will be something new in iTunes 5 that will once more make PC users covet their neighbours' goods. I'm guessing, though, that by the time iTunes 6 supersedes it, that one killer feature will run on the Windows platform too.