Tired of waiting for Mac OS X to arrive? Well, you've got a couple of options if you want to leap in feet-first before Apple releases it this summer. You could shell out half a grand to become a Select member of the Apple Developer Connection and get access to the developer releases. Or, if you haven't got $500 lying around collecting dust, maybe you should take a look at Darwin, Apple's open source core of Mac OS X. Longtime faithful viewer Avi Rappoport wrote in to tell us that Darwin 1.0 was finally released on Wednesday, and awaits your eager download from Apple's web site-- for free. This landmark release gives you a full-fledged binary installer; fire it up, point it at a blank disk, and let it do its thing. You'll be cranking along with Mac OS X in no time.

Whoops, did we say Mac OS X? We meant Darwin, of course. Because while you'll get all kinds of nifty core OS features slated for Mac OS X like protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking, you might notice a few key Mac OS X features are missing. Like, say, the interface; you won't get Aqua with the Darwin release, but instead you'll be tooling along with a command line. See, Darwin is a "complete" operating system all by itself, but it's derived from BSD UNIX-- and it shows. You'll also be missing all three of Mac OS X's APIs; no Carbon, no Classic, and no Cocoa. And as far as we can tell, Mac OS X's graphics architectures (Quartz for 2D, OpenGL for 3D, and QuickTime) are all absent as well. No, there are no free rides, folks... Darwin 1.0 is a big deal, to be sure, but only for open source developers. Don't bother downloading and installing it unless you're eager to go digging around in the UNIXy guts of Apple's next-generation operating system.

It's interesting to note that, as rumored, support for running Darwin on Intel-based hardware is indeed included in this release. Is Apple preparing an emergency PowerPC exit strategy, in case the AIM alliance collapses? And the fact that Apple just shipped a new version of Darwin Streaming Server may turn a few heads, too; Apple's free, open source software to stream QuickTime content now runs on Windows NT, according to a press release. Let the wild speculation commence...

Well, smack our butts and call us Spanky-- the Mac version of Netscape 6 Preview Release was actually released at the same time as the versions for other platforms! We were first alerted to this happy development by faithful viewer Robert Brockman, who wrote in to tell us that AtAT looks peachy-keen in Netscape 6, excepting the default 16-point text that's infecting all new browsers. Pardon our earlier platform-delay pessimism, but given that we had to wait a whole year before Microsoft deigned to ship a version of IE5 for us second-class Mac users, we just figured that Netscape would make us wait, too-- especially since the company's now owned by AOL, who always releases Windows software before the equivalent Mac ports. But you know what we say: the true benefit of unparalleled pessimism is the occasional pleasant surprise.

Er, actually, let's qualify that "pleasant" a little. We decided to download the N6 Preview Release ourselves, just to take it for a test-drive. Not being fooled by that 200K "smart installer" that just downloads other components as you install them, we instead downloaded the full self-extracting archive version directly from Netscape's FTP server. It's a 10.5 MB download-- smaller than Mac OS 9.0.4, at least-- but after expanding it, it's a whopping 26 MB of data (1,759 items taking up 34.4 MB on a Mac OS Extended disk). This is the end of bloatware? Sure, that's with all the bells and whistles, but still, we were a little taken aback.

Once we got over that little surprise, we fired up the application itself-- only to watch our system crash hard at the splash screen. After a lengthy forced restart, we decided to give it another try. This time, after what seemed to be an interminably long wait, a browser window finally appeared. And guess what? It looks just as ugly and un-Mac-like as those Mozilla builds that disappointed us so badly. After playing around with it for a while, we've come to the conclusion that Netscape 6's "Gecko" HTML rendering engine is fast, fast, fast-- but everything else about the browser is slower than dirt. For instance, on a G3/266, after clicking the Fonts option in the Preferences panel, we waited nearly four seconds before anything changed on the screen.

All we can say is, we hope this "preview" is previewing the kick-butt Gecko engine and not anything resembling Netscape's idea of a finished Mac application. Where are all the hot keys? Why doesn't Tab let us activate the URL box? Buttons aren't Mac buttons, text boxes aren't Mac text boxes, scrollbars look stupid, and even in HTML pages themselves, form elements look like demented refugees from some half-assed Motif-based UNIX application. Fire up N6PR1 and take a look at a radio button on Netscape's own bug-reporting form to see what we mean. Yuck!

In fact, Microsoft may have made us all wait a year before we got IE5, but it's a Mac application through and through, right down to the choice of fruit flavor for the interface elements. On the other hand, Netscape 6 reminds us of-- dare we say it?-- Word 6.0. Its interface has apparently never heard of the Macintosh, and response from everything that isn't the HTML engine itself recalls the actions of an anesthetized slug. And that's surprising, because AOL Instant Messenger is definitely purebred Mac software; heck, it even supports AppleScript and Text-To-Speech. Unfortunately, AOL's Mac development practices don't appear to have rubbed off on Netscape at all. Here's hoping that there's a lot of work done on this "preview release," or else what few remaining Mac-using Netscape holdouts are left are going to run screaming to Microsoft for solace. (Or iCab. Or Opera, if they ever release the damn thing.)

Well, it looks like "Redmond Justice" may indeed go off the air sooner rather than later, one way or another. According to the New York Times, the "fast track" schedule for the conclusion of the case has been set, and it's aggressive. Clear your viewing calendar for the following dates, or you'll miss all the drama. First, the government has until April 28th to submit its remedy proposals to the judge. Then Microsoft has until May 10th to issue a response. The government has until May 17th to respond to the response. And then the real action kicks in: hearings are to start on May 24th, "presumably with witnesses." Once all that's over, the case ends, and Microsoft's appeals process begins-- which may be kicked right upstairs to the Supreme Court.

Now, that whole schedule goes out the window and the show comes to an abrupt end if a settlement is reached before this all plays out. Given the complete and utter lack of progress made over the course of four months of negotiations, we originally doubted that a settlement is in the cards. But faithful viewer Bill Moore has us a bit worried; he pointed out that Bill Gates himself was in Washington to meet with President Clinton. According to a TechWeb article, Gates was simply "participating in a White House conference on the new economy," but the man was lobbying up a storm in "closed-door sessions" with members of the House and Senate. Guess what they were talking about? Don't sprain your brain thinking too hard.

And while Clinton and Gates reportedly only engaged in "friendly conversation" and "did not speak of the antitrust case," we all know better, right? Someone's trying to grease the wheels. As Ed Black, the president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, points out, "such a rich schedule of meetings is generally reserved for world leaders, and rarely given to someone who violated federal laws." Apparently "$3 million in political donations" (and being the richest man in the world) can cover a multitude of sins. Here's hoping that Bill's obvious lobbying efforts don't lead to a mysterious willingness to settle on the government's part.