All right, some 125,000 movies were downloaded from iTunes the first week the service was available. Since then, things have been fairly silent on that front. That only one studio is participating certainly limits your choices, but there’s a larger question, which is whether it makes any sense at all to buy a movie from any download service except as a novelty. Or maybe you’re stuck in a hotel with nothing to do.

True, Amazon has more studios on board, just about all except Disney in fact, but the situation is little better, and Mac users aren’t allowed right now.

Both services have severe restrictions, even though the prices are barely less than what you’d pay for a physical DVD from a discount retailer. You can copy the downloaded file to a DVD, but only for backup. You can’t take that disc and play it on a regular DVD deck. Foolish, but true. The movie studios also make a big deal of all those extras on the DVD versions of your favorite movies. You have a regular cut, a director’s cut, deleted scenes, background information, and lots more.

But not on those particular movie downloads.

Now to whom do you assign the blame? Is it Steve Jobs and his crew Apple for not making a better deal, Amazon or any of the other services out there? Or do you put the blame four-square in the hands of the movie companies and their lawyers who came up with these silly notions in the first place?

Yes, we all know there is DRM on music downloads too, but at least with Apple, the restrictions aren’t so severe as to inconvenience most law-abiding people, which is why there are not a lot of complaints. Aside from exclusives, the music companies are essentially agnostic about which services they’ll sell to. That means that Microsoft’s forthcoming Zune Marketplace, and the existing services, have many of the same titles that you find on iTunes. To the greedy companies who license that music, they’re happy to take your money and they don’t care where you get your music, so long as it’s from a legal source and they benefit.

Now I’m sure the movie companies understand that technology is changing, and that someday broadband speeds will be sufficient that you’ll be able to download high definition movies in just a few minutes. They need to prepare for these developments, and they are just wading in the waters right now and trying all sorts of lame solutions hoping that some will gain traction.

Today, however, I find little reason to download a movie, except as an experiment, as I did on the day iTunes began to carry such fare. All my movie rentals come from Netflix. They have a great selection, even of older titles, and, if you get on the waiting list early enough, you will rarely be passed over when a hot new release is available. Yes, I know some have complained that folks who rent too many titles over a month may be getting short shrift. Perhaps Netflix is acting like the ISP when you use too much bandwidth, but I don’t think it happens to that many people.

For the rest of us, Netflix is cheap, flexible, reliable. If I truly do want to buy a movie, and I do on occasion, Netflix often offers previewed DVDs at discount prices. Or you can save money on new product and go to Wal-Mart or Amazon for your favorite titles. The former, for example, often sells new releases at a discount, a loss-leader, just to get you in the store to buy other merchandise. Regardless, it makes plenty of sense to take advantage of those great prices.

So if I can do all this, why would I want to save a couple of dollars for a crippled movie download? The answer is, that I don’t, and I won’t until the movie studios and the services that carry their product get together and come up with a sensible solution.

What does that mean? Pure and simple, the download version must be just like the one you buy at a store. You can make a DVD copy of it, the resolution and content, with all the extras intact, is identical. The only possible difference might be some minor restrictions on copying the file to a certain number of DVD blanks, which makes perfect sense.

And it should be cheaper than the physical version, since the studios don’t have to pay for manufacturing, packaging, shipping and wholesale distribution. But, at a time when movie studios can waste tens of millions of dollars to fawn over an overpaid star, you can’t really expect them to do something that makes sense, right?

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The other day, I got a letter from a long-time reader that, in part, disputed my contention that Macs were now priced similar to comparably-equipped Windows PCs. Why? Not because of any factual information, but because Consumer Reports magazine said so.

This reaction is understandable, since Consumer Reports is supposed to be incorruptible. After all, it’s run by a non-profit organization, it buys all the products it tests and takes no advertising. However, that doesn’t mean its editors don’t have an agenda, and clearly they do when it comes to reviewing computers. Sure, Macs get high ratings, but there are always little nits in the articles that reflect myths rather than facts.

Take, for example, the alleged higher price of a Mac, a real irritant in my book, since it’s so not true. Yes, I realize that the big box PC makers build cheap products that are often considered loss leaders, since they provide little or no profit. Those low prices, however, are just come-ons, designed to entice you to check out an online or brick and mortar store. Once you’re curious, they want to upsell you to something that’ll provide more profit opportunities. Click the Customize button at a PC store or manufacturer’s ordering center and get ready to get lost in option heaven, which is the real profit source.

Although Apple lets you customize their computers too, you can’t strip them most of the basics, such as gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, iLife and all the rest. Yes, I realize some of you would rather have your Macs without certain features, but when it comes to a Mac mini, it’s definitely a bad idea to try to install something later on, something you forgot about when you placed the original order.

But that’s not the real comparison. You have to equip the Mac and the PC as closely as possible to get the true price, and here Apple seems to fare better and better as time goes on. The newest MacBook Pros, for example, not only have faster processors for the very same price as the models they replace, but larger hard drives and more memory. The 15-inch models even get FireWire 800 and dual-layer SuperDrives.

Then there is the Mac and viruses myth. No, I’m not talking about the Windows virus that shipped on some iPods last month. Aside from Apple’s cheeky comments on the subject, which brought lots of intense criticism from some quarters, it’s pretty much a dead issue. Stuff happens. No, instead I’m talking about the oft-repeated claim that, as Mac market share rises, more viruses will come to the platform.

I don’t know about you, but isn’t an audience of twenty million enough to attract some Internet criminals to the party? After all, that’s surely enough computers to cause an awful amount of damage. Besides, being the first to author a virulent Mac infection ought to carry some sort of status among the criminal community, I suppose. But it’s not happening. Why?

For one thing, it’s the simple fact that Mac OS X makes it difficult for a virus to spread. Oh, it’s not so terribly hard to do a one-off destructive infection, say invoking an AppleScript that, when launched, can launch a Terminal command that wipes out a bunch of your files. But it’s not something that spreads behind your back. It requires the conscious effort of launching the thing to do its nasty stuff. You can’t just open an email, as you do under present versions of Windows, and have things go awry.

The fact that Mac OS X application installers generally require passwords and several clicks to do their thing provides another ounce of protection, or at least give you a chance to think before you act.

This doesn’t mean that malware can’t possibly infect a Mac and spread into the wild, but it makes things more difficult than on the Windows platform. It’s an open question how well Windows Vista will fare in this regard, but how can you feel terribly confident when Microsoft itself feels the need to attempt to supplant third party security software vendors with a protection package of its own?

In the meantime, Apple is clearly basking in the glow of booming sales of new Macs. If they can avoid some serious screw-ups, and certainly ignore certain sources of erroneous tech news, they might actually take the Mac to greater heights than ever before in their history.

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