The conflicting Mac OS X release rumors are flying fast and furious now, and the shouting has reached a fever pitch. By now we've heard 'em all: Mac OS X 1.0 to be launched on Steve Jobs's birthday, February 24th, with no more betas; Mac OS X Public Beta 2 to be released at the Expo, with the 1.0 release following a few months later; Mac OS X "Power User Release" to materialize at the Stevenote; Apple to rename the operating system "Mac OS XI," now due in mid-2002; etc. But while the rest of us are arguing about how "my OS X rumor can beat up your OS X rumor," wouldja believe Apple's over in Germany spilling the real dirt?

That's right; apparently that whole "veil of secrecy" thing doesn't fully apply in Deutschland, because according to a ZDNet article first pointed out to us by faithful viewer Matt, Apple was unusually forthcoming about the imminent system release when chatting with a group of German developers. (Evidently they have ways of making you talk.) Straight from Apple itself, here's the scoop: as previously reported by both ZDNet and the Naked Mole Rat, the original public beta is a lone wolf, and there will be no more betas for the eager public to chew on. Now, before you look all crestfallen and start to pout, that's actually good news, because another beta would pretty much guarantee at least a few more months before the final version emerged from Apple's underground bunkers. So get that hangdog look off your face and rejoice-- the next version to see the light of day will be the long-awaited Golden Master for developers to whale on just prior to sending the thing off to be stuffed into pretty boxes.

As for the actual release date itself, apparently that's still not 100% certain; while Mac OS X is "feature-frozen" and "on track to ship by February," the developers present were swapping rumors that the big day would fall either during next month's Macworld Expo in San Francisco (a scenario we consider to be almost pathologically optimistic) or at the February Expo in Tokyo. And for those of you who are looking askance at the Tokyo possibility because you don't think that Apple would unleash such an important product at an overseas event, need we remind you that the public beta was released at the Apple Expo in Paris? So there you have it, folks; provided you've got the hardware and the inclination, you can be awash in Mac OS X-y goodness in less than two months. Get psyched!

Okay, Monday-morning quarterbacks-- where did Apple go wrong? Why, after hitting a split-adjusted price of $75 earlier this year, is the company's stock currently gasping for breath at under $15 a share? It's all well and good to rattle off the same mistakes that Steve has enumerated at various public self-flagellatory appearances-- the poorly-handled reorganization of educational sales, the "Market? What market?" focus and premium pricing of the Cube, the ludicrously wide "Megahertz Gap" coupled with the simplemindedness of the buying public, etc. But those are presumably symptomatic of some greater, more basic cause, right? After all, it's not like Steve to steer us so wrong. So what really caused all those missteps?

Well, Graef Crystal over at Bloomberg has a theory: Steve was distracted by something-- something fast, and expensive, and oh-so-glamorous. No, it's not Ivana Trump. We'll give you a little hint: it rhymes with "Shmulfstream Shmet." Yes, apparently the blame for this entire mess can be pinned squarely on Steve's shiny new toy, the Gulfstream V private jet that Apple's board gave him last January. As Graef points out, ever since Steve took delivery of his flying machine, Apple's woes have steadily increased on the Pain Index.

So what do you think-- too much flying the jet, not enough steering the company? Or perhaps Steve's always out washing the thing in the driveway when he should be spending more time working on his next insanely great product idea. We can see him out there in a T-shirt and cut-offs, hosing the thing down... his wife yells, "Steve, Fred Anderson's on the phone; something about this quarter's sales figures?" and Steve yells back, "I'll call him later-- I still have to do the Turtle Wax." And now what do we have? An expected loss of a quarter of a billion dollars. Little did the board know that a simple gift like a private jet could set in motion a chain of events of such disastrous proportions. Hopefully for Christmas they got him something simpler, like maybe a fruitcake.

Further signs of a slowing economy: while Apple's recent financial woes didn't lead to any actual layoffs (at least, none of which we're aware), there was a hiring freeze instituted, and now we've got more evidence that certain Apple employees may have taken pay cuts. As far as we can tell, all human Apple staff survived Steve's infamous "speed bump" with salaries intact, but some of the more abstract entities on the payroll may not have been quite so lucky. Case in point: the Mac OS Smiley Face.

Regular viewers will recall that a couple of months ago, in the process of investigating Clarus the Dogcow's apparent "early retirement," we also discovered that, in addition to holding down his new role as the leftmost icon in the Mac OS X Dock, the Mac OS Smiley Face was moonlighting as the new logo for USSEARCH.com. Well, evidently even a second job wasn't enough to make ends meet, because as someone over in the MacNN Forums discovered, Smiley has also retained a position as the "Tell A Friend!" logo at PlusNet. Oh, sure, he's all dolled up in a PlusNet purple and yellow uniform, but that's unmistakably him.

Tsk, tsk-- so Apple's lean times (not to mention the slowing economy as a whole) have forced ol' Smiley to hold down three jobs just to keep food on the table for Mrs. Smiley and the rest of the Smiley clan. Isn't it shameful that such a respected and prestigious logo has now been reduced to such extreme measures? Perhaps Apple's lawyers will take notice and intervene; we're sure that a healthy settlement for trademark violation should be more than enough to let Smiley off of PlusNet's hook without putting his family out on the street.