Happy August! Gosh, we do love the changing of the months; we get to start writing 8s instead of 7s on our checks, there's a new wiener dog picture on the kitchen calendar, and-- best of all-- we can officially start talking about how Mac OS X 10.1 is due "next month." (Actually, we're not entirely sure that is better than the calendar thing-- on the one hand, sure, it's nice that we'll have better performance and a raft of new functionality in 30-60 days, but on the other hand, this is one seriously cute wiener dog we're talking about, here.)

In any case, whether or not you find it as exciting as a charming snapshot of a dachshund, version 10.1 of Apple's shiny new operating system is due to arrive sometime next month, and after Uncle Steve's little demo a couple of weeks ago, lots of people are anxious to know just how real those performance improvements will be. After all, during his keynote spiel, we don't think Steve ever mentioned what sort of hardware he was using; for all we know, that was a prototype with dual 1.3 GHz G4s under the hood that launched Internet Explorer in "about a bounce."

Well, if you're looking for independent confirmation that the speed boosts shown at the Expo are very real indeed, look no further than Accelerate Your Mac; someone over there "acquired" (ahem) the 10.1 "Macworld Preview Pre-Release Build" and installed it on both an original Power Mac G4/733 (the SuperDrive model) and a Power Mac G4/533 dual-processor model. Both Macs launched applications two to five times faster than they did under Mac OS X 10.0.4, boot times are shorter by up to 18%, logins are faster, and Quake 3 framerates jumped by 12% to 26% depending on the game configuration. In other words, it's "wind in your hair" time in X-ville.

Granted, these aren't exactly "Rev. A iMac"-level systems, so your mileage may vary, but overall, we're pretty pleased with the verification of Steve's demonstrated speed boost. At first we were concerned that all of these wonderful speed increases were being observed on G4-class equipment, making us wonder how much of an improvement we'd see on our Altivec-less G3-powered gear, but in poking around AYM's forums, we found some very encouraging results from another fearless tester who had installed a couple of prerelease 10.1 builds on a beige G3-- okay, a G3 running at 533 MHz, but a G3 nonetheless. So it looks to us like Mac OS X users with Macs of all shapes and sizes can look forward to some pretty hefty speedups when 10.1 ships next month-- and for those of you keeping track, that means sometime when the next wiener dog is on the calendar.

The way we see it, you can choose to interpret relations between Apple and Adobe in one of two ways. The first is that we're talking about two large and mature corporations who always behave rationally and in the best interests of their respective shareholders; in that scenario, Adobe's decision to skip the last Macworld Expo was purely a financial choice and its visible lack of Mac OS X-native applications is due entirely to porting difficulties and the need to allocate resources to more pressing projects. The other possibility is that Apple and Adobe are experiencing some sort of rift ranging anywhere from a mild chilliness to an outright feud, which is primarily responsible for the Expo snub and the sorry state of Carbonization in Adobe's product stable, but which is hidden from public view as much as possible. Gee, guess which scenario we prefer to believe?

We've heard lots of reasons why relations between the two companies might be strained right now, but the biggest may be Apple's plan to jump into the image-editing software business. Faithful viewer The M@d H@tter pointed out that Think Secret now claims that Apple's upcoming "iPhoto" application is the wedge currently driving the two companies apart. At first we figured that any consumer image-editing package that Apple might produce shouldn't put any strain on Adobe, since Photoshop is very much aimed at professional users.

There are two reasons, though, why the prospect of iPhoto may indeed be leaving a sour taste in Adobe's mouth: the first is that Adobe apparently does have a consumer-grade version of its imaging powerhouse, and we don't mean PhotoDeluxe; "Photoshop Elements" is apparently shipping now and costs $99. If Apple ships iPhoto for free on all Macs and makes it available for download à la iTunes, then Adobe may well suffer lost Mac sales of its product. The second possibility is that Apple may actually be considering a professional complement to iPhoto; after all, since iMovie has Final Cut Pro and iDVD has DVD Studio Pro, Apple may actually be considering going after Photoshop full-force with "Photo Studio Pro." Granted, such a move would be tantamount to suicide, but we are talking about Apple, here.

We're far more likely to believe that potential lost sales of Photoshop Elements is why Adobe is allegedly so bummed about iPhoto, and while we don't have any evidence that this is the case, it fits nicely with a lot of little facts that just never really sat quite right in our heads. For instance, is it really just a coincidence that when Adobe was highlighting its first three major Carbon applications a couple of weeks ago, Photoshop was nowhere to be seen-- when the company had demonstrated a quick-and-dirty Carbonized version of that application over three years ago? And given how obviously "iPhoto" fits into Apple's digital hub strategy, isn't it strange that iMovie debuted nearly two years ago, but we still don't have an Apple-branded image editor? It's almost as if Apple's been holding out on us because releasing such an animal might tick off an important industry partner, or something. Hmmm...

In any case, we're guessing we may know more by the end of next month. If the current projections are correct and new Mac OS X 10.1-loaded, LCD-sporting iMacs are due to surface at the upcoming Apple Expo, what better venue also to introduce a nifty new application called iPhoto? If that happens, and Adobe immediately updates its Mac OS X release scheduled listing Photoshop X for shipment in June of 2006, we'll know something was up.

Oh, the ambivalence! In Frankenstein-speak, "$1.1 billion lawsuit bad... ensuing comical press releases good!!" In other words, we were happy for Apple's sake when the court threw out Imatec's infringement claim against Apple for allegedly using patented technology in ColorSync, but man, did we ever miss hearing from Imatec's one-man press nightmare, Dr. Hanoch Shalit. You remember this guy, right? Back when the case was still active, he used to issue six press releases each day-- and that was just before having his morning coffee. If Apple introduced a new iMac, there'd be an Imatec press release reminding people that those new iMacs ship with ColorSync, and that Imatec is suing Apple. If Apple announced a quarterly profit, there was Hanoch with a press release about how that money would soon be Imatec's. If Steve caught a cold, you guessed it-- press release, probably noting that Apple's CEO was clearly being divinely smitten for infringing patents.

Well, after the case was thrown out, Imatec sort of collapsed in on itself, with good ol' Hanoch departing the organization with a healthy half-mil in severance pay and all his image-processing intellectual property, such as it was. So what became of Hanoch's last hurrah, in which he issued a press release basically insulting the judge who ruled against him and announcing his plans to appeal the court's decision? We've long wondered if the Hanochless Imatec continued the appeals process, or if it just crumbled into dust. (The company's old web site no longer works, so for all we knew, "Imatec Lite" had just plain fallen off the face of the earth.)

But here comes faithful viewer Jeff Richardson to the rescue, who noticed an article over at Law.com about the case. Evidently Imatec and/or Hanoch did continue the appeals process-- and the Appeals Court just smacked it down again. Siding with the original judge's decision completely, the Appeals Court ruled that, "having properly concluded that Dr. Shalit did not own the rights to the patent, the district court correctly concluded that both he and Imatec lacked standing to bring this infringement suit." Meaning, bye-bye appeal-- and a second bittersweet farewell to Hanoch, as well.

Speaking of Hanoch, we were especially tickled finally to hear some details about why he lost his case so completely. Apparently Apple's lawyers managed to find "an agreement between Shalit and a company he once worked for which ascribed rights to the technology to the company." Yes, folks, all that noise over a potential $3.3 billion loss for Apple (if treble damages had been awarded, as Imatec was seeking), and Shalit never even owned the patents in question in the first place. Man, we miss that guy!