Now it's come to this ...

Well, the inevitable finally happened . . . the "Big M" has (at last) made its music catalog available to iTunes users. And they're glad they've held out this long ...

So for a buck a pop, you can get the best of the best from their decades of musical endeavors. Hate everything but one or two tracks? Now they're yours without the headache of suffering through the rest of the album.

Hey Metallica, thanks for catching up with just about everything else in the world . . .

I mean, we've been able to get movie trailers, TV shows, music videos and countless other forms of crap on iTunes -- sometimes free -- forever, it seems. What exactly have you been waiting for?

Thanks for coming on board, but your belated entry makes your arrival nearly pointless.

To borrow a phrase from a more recent release, "So what?"