Apparently the "Ask And Ye Shall Receive" Fairy has seen fit to bless the AtAT studios with her divine and sparkly presence. Just yesterday we mourned the lack of publicly available information on Apple's progress in nurturing the sapling public beta into a mighty, towering Mac OS X 1.0-- and hours later, we received word from faithful viewer Mentholiptus that Mac OS Rumors has dished the dirt on post-public-beta internal builds. How's that for speedy delivery? We haven't gotten service this fast since... well, since lunch, actually. But still, we're mighty impressed.

So here's the scoop according to MOSR,: the controversial 2E14 build, which some people claim includes performance optimizations (while others stridently deny that fact), reportedly does run "up to twice as fast" on selected hardware. However, 2E14 came out months ago, and more recent builds still hidden behind Uncle Steve's Veil of Secrecy are "much faster" still. If you believe MOSR's sources, current builds of Mac OS X contain Altivec optimizations, a more-developed Quartz 2D graphics architecture, and a lot less performance-killing debugging code; the upshot is that applications are now running faster than ever. Reportedly Photoshop is up to 25% zippier in the current beta builds than in the original public beta.

Better yet, for those of you who continue to have nightmares about RAM requirements, Mac OS X's memory usage is rumored to be "down almost 30%" since September's initial release. By our calculations, that means 90 MB instead of 128 MB-- but then again, it ain't over yet, and even the original public beta ran pretty well in 64 MB of RAM, provided that Classic never entered the picture. It sounds like Apple might be able to stick to the 64 MB minimum requirement after all.

Keep in mind that all this is rumor about internal-only builds. We should also mention that the mystical, magical 2E14 build (which MOSR describes as "the more recent Developer seed of the Public Beta) apparently isn't a developer-only release at all; several non-developer AtAT viewers have written in claiming that their own copies of the public beta (purchased more than a month after its initial release) claim to be 2E14 in the "About This Macintosh" window. That might explain why some users complain that the public beta is painfully slow, while others can't figure out why some people are whining so much. Check your version and compare your experience-- it's easy and fun!

In any case, it sounds like we were right in supposing that Steve is keeping Mac OS X improvements under his big, mysterious hat until he's ready to wow the world-- either at next month's Macworld Expo Stevenote, or at this rumored February 24th "special event," or whenever the heck the fancy strikes him. Hey, what are you gonna do? The man's mercurial; get over it, already.

It's been a while since Apple's crack legal team made an appearance on the show, and the fans are getting restless. "Where are the lawsuits against iMac copycats?" they ask. "Where are the cease-and-desist orders against well-meaning but technically copyright-infringing web sites?" Well, it's not exactly the same thing, but you want it, we got it: Apple Legal's latest target is the Linuxy Themes.org site, who was recently ordered to pull all Aqua-styled Linux visual themes from its download server. (Never let it be said that AtAT doesn't bow to viewer demands and resort to craven pandering for the sake of the ratings.)

Evidently, Apple took exception to at least four themes posted to the site: Aqua, AquaX, eMac, and eMac-GTK. While we haven't seen the themes in question, our understanding is that they revamped the Linux user interface to resemble that of Mac OS X. We can see where Apple (and by Apple we mean, of course, Steve) might get a wee bit upset about competing operating systems swiping the lickability of his own pet project months before the 1.0 release is even out the door; however, we're not entirely sure on what legal basis Apple might object. The company has lost on the whole "look and feel" thing before (hence, Windows), so we assume the themes in question are more than just Aqua-inspired; perhaps they contain direct screenshots of Aqua widgets, or include the sacrosanct Apple logo itself (a transgression that probably gets Steve on the horn to the legal department faster than any other).

Whatever the reason, judging by the comments posted at Themes.org, Apple's not winning any converts from the Linux crowd by suppressing Aquafied themes. Most of the participants just see this as yet another heavy-handed "Big Company Squashes The Little Guys" move on Apple's part, which of course doesn't play too play with the open source crowd. Granted, these people are all making judgments without ever even seeing Apple's letter requesting that the themes be pulled, so their opinions are being based purely on speculation; still, if Apple was ever counting on Mac OS X's open source Darwin core and BSD underpinnings to capture some market share from the Linux brethren, moves like this (necessary though they might be, from an intellectual property standpoint) aren't helping the cause.

Remember back when Apple issued that nasty ol' earnings warning, and several analysts said that the problem was Apple-specific instead of indicating an industry-wide slowdown? Well, since then, earnings across the entire personal computer market have been falling like dominoes, and we find ourselves searching for a word like "wrong" but times a million. Now, given that big computer companies like Compaq and Gateway have already announced earnings shortfalls (and CNET thinks that Dell may be next), what other high-tech company do you suppose might be caught in the carnage? Well, how about the company that sells the operating system that's bundled with all those computers that aren't getting sold?

That's right; while it shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention, according to a MacCentral article sent to us by faithful viewer Mark A. Gangi, Microsoft has announced that its earnings and revenue for the quarter will be "less than previously forecast." As a Mac enthusiast, there are several reactions to this news that might be suitable for you:

• "Oh no, the company who makes Internet Explorer and Office:Mac is in trouble!"
• "Does Microsoft have to copy everything that Apple does?"
• "Finally, a chance to use the phrase 'beleaguered Microsoft' ad infinitum."

Pick the one that best suits your needs. Redmond-haters shouldn't get too giddy, though; beleaguered Microsoft's reduced expectations still amount to earnings of $0.46 a share. Compare that to Apple's expected $250 million loss and Bill's little software company looks like it's sitting pretty. Still, the investors don't necessarily agree; when last we checked, beleaguered Microsoft's stock was down over six and a half points, or about 12%. Could this be the beginning of the end? And if it is, to whom will we Mac users turn when we need an annoying animated help system?