I don’t want you to think that I deliberately instigate discussions of this sort. In fact, I hadn’t intended to see the inside of the repair department at a local dealership for another 2,500 miles or three months, whichever comes first. But a warranty repair the previous day left a minor, but irritating unintended consequence, so I returned on a Saturday morning.

A woman with child in tow, waiting for her car, asked me a question about something or other. I don’t quite remember what, but the discussion soon turned to personal computers. Her home PC had been acting up big time and she was looking for something new. Aha! Time to say my piece.

“Have you considered a Mac?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Aren’t they expensive?”

I want into a brief explanation of why the Mac is, in the end, actually cheaper. She wanted a laptop this time, and her budget was around $1,000. I recommended an iBook to her, and briefly explained why and where she could get one.

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If Steve Jobs was right last month when he said Tiger is “on track” for shipment in the first half of this year, no doubt Apple is in the late stages of development. I am not saying this because I have any inside information. It’s simply a logical assumption based on the promise of on-time delivery. In order to have Tiger on sale by June 30th, a shipping or Golden Master version would have to be ready by late May or the first week of June at the latest, to give time to duplicate CDs and ship the boxes to dealers.

So there’s not much time left, and that may mean any wish list at this point doesn’t make much sense. At the same time, not all of the promised 200 new features for Tiger have been revealed. Yes, we know about the Spotlight desktop search engine, Dashboard, the Automator instant scripting capability, plus the various technologies that only programmers will be able to appreciate. But try as I might, I can’t count 150 new features, the original claim, let alone 200. Now it’s quite possible that figure includes minor interface updates, which could swell the list big time. Regardless, I’ll take Apple at its word until I hear otherwise.

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Before the dust settled on the introduction of the Napster-To-Go online music rental service, reports about breaking its copy protection technique began to surface. Of course, it’s actually Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management scheme, but that’s beside the point.

I first got wind of it as I was taping an interview for this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE. The story didn’t come as a surprise, although the “secret” technique described is really not anything new.

Now maybe you aren’t interested in what happens to Napster, since the service isn’t available for Mac users, or at least not yet, but it’s a good indication of how such reports can get out of hand.

What is this secret technique, and can it affect other music services, such as Apple’s? The answer, of course, is yes, but it doesn’t involve cracking anyone’s DRM. All you have to do is run a program that can record the music as it is playing on your computer. There are programs of this sort for both Mac and Windows users, and while it will capture the audio with total digital accuracy, it’s a time-consuming process. It will take 100 hours to record 100 hours of songs.

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When you look at it, Microsoft probably had no choice. As you know, in the past the company has tried to undercut its competition by bringing out free products that other companies asked Windows users to pay for. Certainly it worked with Internet Explorer, although the truth is that it was, in those days at least, superior to Netscape.

At the same time, Windows users are having a rough time of it these days. Spyware, viruses, and if you don’t watch out, your PC may be converted to a spam bot before your eyes. That’s a computer taken over by spammers to send their junk to even more unwary recipients. In fact, I’ve heard estimates that half the spam circulated these days is spread by unwary PC owners who have allowed their computers to be hijacked.

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