Even if you've never actually used the Mac OS X public beta yourself, if you're at all interested in the future of the Mac platform, you've surely read a fair bit about Apple's new operating system direction. That means, one way or another, you're aware that Mac OS X is a pretty drastic departure from the way Mac people have done things for sixteen years straight. Some of those changes are well-reasoned and welcome, while others seem entirely arbitrary and threaten to alienate users who want to do things "the Mac way." So why, pray tell, would Apple risk its one irreplaceable asset-- the loyalty of its customer base-- with such a seemingly unnecessary gamble?

Some people think it's just a Steve Jobs ego trip. After all, when you get right down to it, Steve's not exactly a Mac person-- he's a NeXT person. And since he's been in charge, the Mac is becoming more and more like the NeXT. (We should have seen it coming as soon as he got rid of the floppy drive.) But as faithful viewer Jean Willi points out, over at ZDNet, David Coursey has another take on the situation; he thinks that Mac OS X may simply be "an OS for Larry." Ellison, that is. Swimmin' pools... Movie stars.

Coursey goes on to list lots of intriguing facts which may help explain why Apple's betting it all on what is still fundamentally an enterprise operating system. There's nothing there that most of us didn't already know-- yeah, Steve and Larry are bestest buddies; sure, Larry's Oracle products are happy in a UNIX-based environment; of course, Larry wants to be Bill Gates-- but when seeing all those tidbits collected in one handy list, we admit, it looks like Steve might be bending over backwards to provide Larry with an installed base of Oracle-friendly systems so Oracle can become the Microsoft of the Internet. .NET, .SHMET; Larry wants nothing more than to take Bill down.

Reasonable? Hardly. Fun to consider? Sure! But in our opinion, Coursey doesn't take the motive far enough. Okay, so Larry and Steve are friends; is that enough reason for Steve to risk Apple's entire future for the sake of Larry's ambitions of world domination? Is there really a chance that a formal Apple-Oracle alliance could leverage the influence of the Internet to unseat the Microsoft-Intel hegemony? We just don't think Steve's quite that pie-in-the-sky about things anymore... he seems too realistic to go charging at windmills. Look at 1997's "truce" with Microsoft, for example.

Nope, there's only one reasonable explanation for Steve's complicity in Larry's takeover plans-- Larry's clearly got some dirt on Steve. Something terrible must have happened at one of Larry's wild CEO parties, something that even Alan Deutschman never uncovered when researching The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Something involving, perhaps, an underage model, half a kilo of heroin, and concrete shoes for a city councillor who opposed the construction of Steve's helipad-- and Larry's got it all on tape. Hey, blackmail really does make the world go 'round!

"But AtAT," we hear you ask plaintively, "surely you're aware that after almost three years without a major update, Netscape has finally released Netscape 6! Why no commentary on this momentous occasion?" Well, leaving aside for a moment the fact that you have the audacity to question our judgment on programming matters (we'll let it slide this time), we simply haven't bothered to try it yet. After seeing what Netscape considered to be "Preview Release" quality back in the PR1 days, we were more than a little leery about anything issuing forth from the company that purported to be a "finished" product. Instead, we figured we'd lay low, wait for the early adopters to rush in, and see if they emerged unscathed. This is known as the "here, drink this milk and tell me if it's still any good" strategy-- selfish, sure, but hey, these are browsers we're talking about, here. There's too much at stake to risk a direct frontal assault.

As it turns out, we're glad we waited. After peeking our heads in at MacInTouch's reader report on Netscape's latest offering, we doubt we'll soon be able to erase the sheer carnage from our memories anytime soon. Most of those who ran in ahead to test for the presence of mines got their legs blown clear off, user experience-wise. There are some choice quotes in that scary collection of last words, such as:

• "It appears to be a total disaster"
• "I'm afraid to use the program anymore"
• "Mind-numbingly slow"
• "Real UI mess"
• "Save yourself the irritation... I threw it away"
• "This is the worst shipping software I've tried in a long time"

As for detailed descriptions of the biggest problems, it sounds like not much has changed since PR1. Evidently Netscape 6 still crashes a lot, and a slew of other annoyances (scroll wheels not working, nonstandard interface elements, etc.) stem from the fact that the application still isn't a real Mac program; scrollbars, form buttons, and the like are all Netscape's own widgets instead of standard Mac ones. Yuck. At least some of the bugs are tremendously exciting, though-- in particular we thrilled to "when I try to run it, it covers my Desktop with about 200 .xul files and then quits out. Needless to say, this does not make a good first impression." In other words, we'll probably get around to trying Netscape 6 the next time we're in a frame of mind usually associated with cliff-diving and bungee-jumping, because as it stands, the software sounds less like a Mac web browser and more like an "extreme sport" for the risk-addicted crowd.

Isn't it funny how Microsoft eventually clued in and started producing actual Mac applications instead of half-assed ports from common code, while Netscape went entirely in the opposite direction? Maybe it's just us, but personally, we'd be pretty darn happy with Netscape Communicator 4.76 retrofitted with the new Gecko rendering engine (which is the one thing people like about Netscape 6) and the capability to use Apple's Mac OS Runtime for Java instead of the included dog-slow and buggy Netscape Java virtual machine. Instead, we see Netscape 6 as sort of like Netscape's Copland-- except the company made the mistake of actually shipping it instead of killing it and harvesting it for parts. However, we reserve final judgment until we work up the nerve to install and try the thing ourselves. We think we can, we think we can...

If Ellison-Jobs blackmail stories are too overt for the true conspiracy theory connoisseurs out there, we've got a few events that some of you may want to string together into a far more subtle scenario. Quick, whenever there's an evil scheme being hatched by an unknown mastermind, who does it always turn out to be? That's right, the quiet guy whom nobody ever suspected. (See, your mom was wrong-- watching all that Scooby-Doo did amount to something.) At the same time, a full 84% of the diabolical plans that actually succeed are hatched by evil scientists. (Bear with us, we're going somewhere with this.)

Okay, rewind for a second. July 19th, 2000: Steve Jobs introduces the latest addition to Apple's innovative hardware line-up, the Power Mac G4 Cube. And what ushers in Apple's official entry into the Cube Era? A promotional video featuring various brainy and/or creative types touting the wonders of the Cube. Among said brainy types is a meek, innocent-looking scientist by the name of Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. At the time, none of us knew who he was; he was just a random science dude calling the Cube "a very important product for Apple and for users... it just kept getting better and better." So the first time we see this guy, he's setting up the Cube to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, Apple will sell a kajillion of them, etc.

Fast-forward to August 15th: Apple issues a press release welcoming the latest addition to its board of directors: one Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. Those of us who eventually connected Apple's newest board member with the Cube-happy guy in the Expo video tucked that interesting little fact away for future reference. And it's a good thing we did, because now let's jet forward to September 28th, otherwise known as "Black Thursday." That was the day that Apple predicted lower-than-expected earnings (due largely to slow Cube sales), resulting in a stock price drop of 50% overnight. The price kept dropping, but not long after Apple's actual reported earnings results on October 18th, AAPL finally bottomed out in the $18-20 range.

Okay, that's the setup, and here's the punchline: according to MacCentral, Art Levinson sunk about a million and a half dollars into Apple stock over the course of October 23rd through the 25th for an average price of about $19 a share, not much more than AAPL's 52-week low. We'll leave you guys to fill in the details, but here we have a guy who starts by helping to set overly-high expectations for Cube sales, then joins Apple's board, and then waits to buy a huge chunk of stock until right after the real Cube sales numbers drop AAPL's price to bargain-basement levels. Coincidence? Ha! We can't wait to hear him say, "I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!"