So another Apple event has come and gone. This latest one wasn't a massive media feeding frenzy, due primarily to the relatively small and specific audience at which the announced product is targeted, but there was still reason to dance once the smoke cleared. Ladies and gentlemen, Mac OS X Server is here. Finally, Apple has shipped an actual released version of an operating system based on the NeXTStep OS that Apple acquired when it purchased NeXT well over two years ago. To be honest, we've been waiting for this moment for so long now, we can hardly believe it's really happened. (Actually, it still hasn't, really-- the Apple Store expects availability within a week, though.)

To most people, the big news about Mac OS X Server isn't so much that it's now shipping; for the most part, we all expected that. Instead, it's the big ol' price drop that Apple threw into the mix that's got people buzzing. Back in January, you may recall that Apple stated the "expected price" of the upcoming operating system would be $995. Even though that price included an unlimited client license (as opposed to Windows NT, which is priced on a per-client-use basis) and Apple's lip-smacking-good WebObjects Internet development framework (which sells separately for $1499), many people were less than pleased with the idea of shelling out a cool grand for an operating system, no matter how much value it contained or how much butt it kicked.

Amazingly enough, just as an anonymous faithful viewer noted last week, Apple listened: as confirmed in a press release, Mac OS X Server is now just $499, still with the unlimited-user license. Education customers can buy the new OS for only $249, and as noted over at MacNN, a 400 MHz "icebox" G3 server decked out with Mac OS X Server, 256 MB of RAM, two 9 GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drives, and five (yes, five) 100 Mbps Ethernet ports will run you just $5000. That's mighty cheap for a mighty powerful server, especially given the web server benchmarks that Captain Steve trotted out at the unveiling. Steve compared the relative web serving performance of two Dell PowerEdge servers, a Sun UltraSparc 10S Unix server, and that $5000 G3 bundled with Mac OS X Server. The first Dell server running Windows NT benchmarked at 300 hits per second. An identical Dell system running Red Hat Linux instead of NT scored a 500. The $8500 Sun machine upped the ante to 600 hits per second. But whupping them all was the G3, clocking in at an incredible 740 hits per second. Price/performance, anyone?

It may not make people's eyes spin around and turn into little dollar signs, but the fact that Apple is making part of Mac OS X Server into an "open source" project may have even greater long-term ramifications than the news about the product's spiffy low price. Apple has done something few of us would ever have expected and announced Project Darwin, an initiative that makes much of the source code to Mac OS X Server freely available to the developer community. Programmers can make their own changes to the code, which is expected to foster a development community that continues to improve the OS much faster than Apple ever could while working alone. It's this sort of effort that has made Linux such a success; Apple hopes for the same kind of dynamic. Included in the initial release of Darwin is the source code to the foundation layers of Mac OS X Server and "core Apple technologies" such as AppleTalk and the HFS+ file system. An Apple press release has more info on this whole surprising development.

Seeing any large computer manufacturer embrace the open source ideal is sort of a shock; seeing Apple pull such a move is downright spooky. Given how closely Apple has protected its control over its products in the past, we have to say, we're more than a little surprised. Even when Apple has tried to be a little more embracing of "open systems" ideas, they've been loath to relinquish a sort of panic button veto power. Take, for example, that disastrous foray into cloning-- which probably failed at least in part due to the dictatorial requirement that all clone models had to be approved by Apple as a condition of the manufacturer's license. Some of those control issues show through in Darwin, as not all of Mac OS X Server's source code will be available, but several industry bigwigs have examined the Darwin open source license and proclaim it to be the real deal; Apple's posted quotes from several of these people. Will the Darwin project perhaps temper the "iron-fisted technocrat" reputation of Steve Jobs? Sure, he killed the clones, but now he's championing the open source initiative by making Apple the first large computer company to open up at least part of their operating system. The man is a conundrum, to be sure.

In fact, all this hubbub has got us thinking: what if AtAT were to become the first "open source" soap opera? Faithful viewers from around the globe could freely download each episode's script, make any changes and improvements they wanted, and re-upload the modified scripts for all to share. Heck, if Apple can do it, we figure anyone can. It's something we'll definitely think about as we continue to put together AtAT 2.0...

So "Redmond Justice" is on hiatus, the star lawyers are probably off sunning themselves on some beach somewhere, and the show's fans are battling withdrawal symptoms until the trial resumes sometime in mid-April. But just because the show's not on the air doesn't mean that a lot of behind-the-scenes work isn't being done. Even as we speak, the "Redmond Justice" writers are huddled together in smoke-filled rooms brainstorming just what will happen next on everyone's favorite antitrust courtroom drama.

During the last several weeks of the trial, it became more and more obvious that the writers were foreshadowing a pretty solid government win. (Microsoft's defense, overall, may well have been better presented by an organ grinder's trained monkey and a pair of Furbies-- with or without batteries.) But once the verdict rolls in, then what? Well, according to the New York Times, those attorneys general of the nineteen U.S. states that are co-litigants in the Justice Department's case are kicking around all kinds of ideas now that they feel they're so likely to win. The remedy listed as "least likely" is a breakup of Microsoft into multiple "Baby Bills," each reponsible for a different software unit-- as in, one company does Windows, another does Office, a third does Explorer and Outlook, etc. Another possibility is that Microsoft might get splintered into multiple companies that all work on all of Microsoft's products, each competing against the other. Still another option is to force Microsoft to license the Windows source code to other companies, "instantly creating competition in the operating system business." All interesting plot twists, to be sure.

It's important to remember that this is all conjecture at this point-- it's certainly still possible for the inimitable Judge Jackson to rule in Microsoft's favor, making the whole issue of penalties moot. Sure, the writers would have to come up with a pretty serious twist for Microsoft to emerge from this battle as the winners, but we don't want to underestimate them; after all, they came up with all that great stuff about the faked video evidence, which was just about the last thing we ever expected to see in an antitrust trial. Here's hoping that the writers keep us all guessing.