Apple Recon's at it again, with an update on their previous juicy story about some upcoming great Mac deals about to enter the channel. The latest skinny is that the rumor is now official, given Apple's less-than-pleased response to Recon's first report. Whoops, guess it was supposed to be a surprise...

According to Recon, these "hot boxes" may hit the newly-christened CompUSA Apple Salon Stores and Apple's online Apple Store as early as this Friday, in time for the annual U.S. traditional Christmas buying frenzy that commences on the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, there's more than a little friction being generated among the Apple resellers who are wondering what these low-cast Macs are, and more importantly, why they didn't get any of them. It could, after all, really bite into their holiday sales if only Apple and CompUSA have these great deals available.

If these deals really surface on Friday, we at AtAT have to think that Apple stands a great chance to move a lot of merchandise this Christmas. These alleged sub-$1000 Macs should move easily into the home and consumer market, while the new Powermac G3's are an excellent deal for folks who want or need a little more power. And if Santa loads up his sleigh with Macs of all shapes and sizes, Apple's likely to be heading back into the black soon.

And while Recon thinks those discount Macs streaming in from south of the border are related somehow to a missing announcement at the November 10th shindig, that obfuscating implement Mac the Knife has his own dirt to dish about the decidedly ho-hum event and its missing 90 minutes of dazzle.

The Knife's first revelation isn't very surprising to faithful AtAT viewers; yes, indeed, Steve Jobs had expected to reveal a major Apple/Oracle deal in addition to the Apple Store, G3 systems, and build-to-order boxes. The nature of that deal is still the subject of rampant speculation... it may have been a merger, or something less earth-shattering like a Microsoft-deal-type investment. But whatever it was, it failed to happen in time for Steve's show.

The second revelation, however, would have made us gasp with surprise, if we knew at all what to make of it. Reportedly, Steve also expected to announce that the majority of Apple's manufacturing would be outsourced to an unnamed Korean company. That just makes us go, "Huh?" It's a little similar to the rumors we've heard about Umax taking over making Apple's low-end Mac line (MacOS Rumors is now declaring that scenario very unlikely, though the Knife claims that Umax may still make Apple's upcoming NC's), but who is this mysterious Korean company? Will we see it emerge from the shadows?

Meanwhile, it's time to start getting jazzed about Mac OS 8.1, the system software update expected to ship in early January, according to InfoWorld Electric. While it's not as significant an upgrade as Mac OS 8 (hence the decimalized increment), it includes at least one very nice feature that we, at least, are eagerly awaiting.

Mac OS 8.1 introduces support for a new Mac file system, once called HFS+, and now apparently named "Mac OS Extended Format." The current Mac file system has a minimum block size that is a straight percentage of the disk's total capacity. Meaning, if you've got a large hard disk, if you save 1KB of data into a file, that file still takes up, say, 64KB of disk space. (Sort of like when the phone company bills you to the next full minute.) If you work with lots of small files, that wasted space really adds up.

Mac OS Extended Format addresses this problem fairly nicely. One beta tester who converted his 2GB hard disk from HFS to the new system freed up over 300MB of wasted space. That, plus the reported speed increase in the new file system, is enough to make us wait on pins and needles.