A bit hard to spot, but note the telltale white earbuds.	Cargo pants and a white cord: Uniform of the new generation?	MyPod, cloaked by its booq case and black headphone cord, shot from above.

An Apple Media Event has been scheduled for this coming Thursday, October 16th at 10 am PST. Details of the event are, in typical Apple fashion, confined to the rumor mill save for the specific fact that this is an "Apple Music" Media Event in which "The year's biggest music story is about to get even bigger." In other words, something iPod/iTunes related is to be sprung upon the world in a few days, and it probably isn't (just) the release of bluetooth headphones. Or, as AppleInsider put it, "It'll be just another day to admire Apple for their strives toward innovation and continued success at changing the world."

Releasing iTunes for Windows would, in fact, be a fairly big strive towards changing the world if you think solely in terms of number of people affected. There are a lot of iPods out there, and more and more of them each day are being bought up by PC users. Give those folks access to 99 cent per song downloads and, well, it might be time for Mr. Jobs to go jet shopping again.

Rumors have surfaced that iTunes 5 will be released for Mac and Windows at the same time, and the improved feature set will be backed by a near doubling of the Apple Music Store's inventory. Cool. I haven't yet forked over a buck for a download yet (though I did plop down 12 bucks at the local bricks-n-mortar for OutKast's brilliant new double CD set two weeks ago), but if I ever do, I'm glad I'll have twice as many songs to choose from.

The rumors also mention improved Digital Rights Management that could allow for free "borrowing" of songs from the Apple Store so you can mull a tune over awhile before plunking down that dollar. That sounds cool, too. That actually sounds kind of like the summer I took full advantage of some electronic store's 30-day trial policy so my roommates and I could have a stereo during our three month stay in Berkeley, CA. Somehow, I think that some folks at Apple have probably done this, too, and will make sure that the feat can't be duplicated at the iTunes store.

Beyond iTunes 5, there are mentions of two top-secret hardware peripherals for iPod, possibly along the lines of a digital voice recorder and some sort of dock for exporting photos and video, either to a television or to a digital media card. Or maybe some wireless bluetooth headphones with a receiver that plugs into the docking jack. I for one really hope that the former is true and allows for live stereo recording direct to mp3 (or AAC, though my Windows friends don't speak that language). How cool would it be if I could record my band Automat's rehearsals and shows direct to my iPod? Heck, I'd have to find something besides MiniDisc recorders to obsessively search Deal News for.

Whatever the crazy mill drums up in the next two days, my money's on a big release party for iPcTunes if nothing else. iPod's market share has simply gotten too big since the release of the Windows-compatible version of the little white walkman for Apple not to capitalize on the hoards of users that must be drooling at thought of finally being allows to join Mac-compatible iPod owners at the great 99 cent store in the sky.

What's really interesting to me, though, is trying to figure out exactly which piece of the market Apple is after next. Honestly, I think the answer is "everyone." And why not? This summer's iPod campaign featured lots of "ordinary people" blissing out to their iPods, and who wasn't won over by that dorky white guy singing along to "Baby Got Back," before that one TV spot was pulled? The new iPod campaign has dropped the commoner in favor of the bling bling. The ethnicity-neutral, stenciled against cool color backgrounds bling bling, that is.

iPods are hot currency. They're showing up in hip hop videos right next to designer track suits, Mercedes, and scantily clad dancers wearing lots of ice. In fact, 50 Cent's latest video, the girls' outfits and his own are color-coordinated to the white and silver iPod the rapper "lovingly caresses" during the opening scenes.

They're showing up all over the streets of New York City. All over the place. And not just on geeky tech-types who bought the first two generations of the gadget, either. Last Friday I took my usual route to work: Three blocks' walk to the subway, express train from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, transfer to the local train to East Harlem, and then another four blocks' walk to the school I teach at. In that time I probably saw about 90 or 100 people, considering that the first train car I was on held about 65 people and the second one had about a dozen on it. I counted no fewer than four iPods in the 50 minutes it took me to commute, five if you include mine.

The kicker is that of the four I spied, two belonged to thirty-something women and the other two to kids who couldn't have been older than 14. No nerdy tech guys (other than me, that is), no ostentatiously rich folks, and no flashy hip-hoppers crossed my path with iPods in tow on that day. To me, this means that Apple is successfully penetrating the consumer market well and beyond the core "techie" niche much as Sony did with the cassette Walkman in the 1980's.

Granted, mine was an entirely unscientific random sampling conducted on a whim (when I saw that first kid dialing his Pod a block away from my house, I knew I should pay attention), but roughly 5% of the people I encountered that morning -- if you include me -- were using iPods. Not 5% of the mp3 player owners or 5% of the people with some kind of portable music player, but 5% of the population. That's pretty significant if you ask me.

Of course, New York City is the media capital of the world, and we're also amongst the trendiest, keep up with the Jones-iest lot you're bound to find anywhere ... but if 5% of the world's population wind up buying iPods (and 25% of those folks upgrade to the newest version), well, that's a lot of white earbuds roaming the globe.

Thus far, Apple has shown that it certainly knows what it's doing when it comes to "changing the world" through digital music. Whatever lies in store for Wednesday's Media Event, one thing is for sure: It will appeal to the most people possible without sacrificing Apple's current push to market sleek, easy to use gadgets that tie into Apple-branded software and aftermarket sales possibilities wherever possible.

That means iTunes 5 and Apple Music Dot Com for Windows. That means easy to use hardware that will extend the iPod's market share without doing anything to undermine downloadable music sales (i.e. Nothing that makes it too easy to rip tracks direct from your friend's CD to your iPod without a computer in there somewhere). And that means bling bling for the masses, women and children first.