So there we sat, checking our inbox every four seconds, hoping for word of a pirate webcast signal the way a condemned man waits for a call from the governor; alas, the pardon never came, and we were forced to sit out Steve Jobs's latest keynote while thousands of registered developers basked in his glory. And more's the pity, because we would love to have seen Steve work that reality-distortin' mojo as he broke the news of Mac OS X's delay. You've heard about this by now, of course-- at the very least, you may have noticed the sudden sharp drop in Apple's stock price following the news. Basically, it works like this: back in January, Steve promised us a full shrinkwrapped 1.0 release of Mac OS X this summer. That would give the "bleeding edge" power users several months to beat on the thing, shake out the inevitable bugs, and whine about rough edges so Apple could smooth them out. All the while, new Macs would continue to ship with Mac OS 9 preloaded-- until next January, at which point hopefully Mac OS X would have evolved into a fully newbie-friendly OS and Apple would ship it on every Mac.

Under the new plan, though, the Mac OS X beta (which everyone and your Aunt Betty was expecting at WWDC) won't surface until this summer, pushing the 1.0 release forward to January. If you've been following this story from the beginning, you've no doubt noticed that this is just one more in a long series of delays for Apple's next-generation operating system. First there was all that time wasted over Copland, and then Apple kept moving the finish line for Rhapsody. By the time the Mac OS X name was even first uttered in public, by our count the system was already at least a couple of years late. Now, the question that Steve had to answer was, given that previous schedule slippages had always been addressed by changing the product's name and feature set, would he be able to pull the scam one more time and get people to swallow it?

The answer, at least in our case, is a resounding "yes." Check out the brilliant piece of spin Uncle Steve gave us this time: Mac OS X is not late, despite its new ship date in January. All that Apple's done, he says, is change the names. What would have been this summer's 1.0 release has simply been recast as a "public beta," while the version that comes out in January will indeed ship immediately on all new Macs. So you see, the availability dates haven't changed at all; only the names have. In fact, the new schedule is even better, since non-developers like us can play with this summer's version as a free public beta (at least, we assume it'll be free, or available for a nominal charge on CD-- only Microsoft charges for betas, right?) instead of shelling out crazy ducats for a "1.0" version that was pretty much going to be a beta anyway. Dang, we really wanted to see him pull this one off live and in person...

Well, at least now we know why WWDC wasn't webcast: no multiprocessor G4 systems, no Apple PDA, and the last thing Apple would want to do is shout the news of its Mac OS X slippage from the rooftops (virtually speaking). But we console ourselves with the knowledge that at some point this summer, we'll get to take the Mac OS X beta out for what is sure to be a life-changing test drive. Unless, of course, at Macworld Expo Steve announces that the summer's beta has been renamed "gamma 1.0" and will ship in January, and "Mac OS X Really-We-Mean-It 1.0" will start shipping on all Macs starting in the summer of 2001.

With the official release of Mac OS X Developer Preview 4 and all the juicy new tidbits that came to light during the Stevenote, it's only natural that Apple's revamped the Mac OS X section of its web site. In fact, Apple now feels that Mac OS X is spongeworthy enough to qualify for its own tab on the glorious Apple.com web page header. Yes, no matter where you are on Apple's site, you're now just a click away from more info on Apple's upcoming operating system-- that's high praise indeed. More importantly, it means we all have some more stuff to look at when we're avoiding getting any actual work done. Score!

Whereas developers will rejoice that DP4 includes the "final API specifications" to allow them to start writing Mac OS X applications, regular Mac geeks like us know where the real joy is; it's in the movies. Apple has posted updated QuickTime movies to demonstrate the changes it's made to Aqua since January's onstage demo-- you remember, the Demo That Lit A Thousand Flames? Of particular interest is the new Dock movie, which reveals some solid improvements to that much-maligned interface element; icons are rendered without tiles, applications are grouped separately from minimized windows and aliases, and when items are dragged out of the Dock, they disappear with a Newtonesque puff of smoke. Now we know why Apple never sold off the Newton technologies when the project was Steved-- that smoke puff is pure interface gold, baby! In short, the Dock now sucks less.

In fact, we're rejoicing at the news that in DP4, Mac OS X has reportedly become quite a bit more Mac-like overall. Whereas the earlier version of Aqua was heavily suffused with NeXT-style interface conventions, CNET notes that Steve spent some time onstage showing how Mac OS X can be made to behave quite a bit like the Macs of today. For one thing, the new Finder (which is really just the NeXT file browser on steroids and cough syrup) is now even more customizable, to the point of being "exactly like the Mac Finder today, if that's the way you want it." Here's hoping. In addition, apparently disk icons can be dragged to the Desktop instead of sitting in the Windows-like "Computer" directory. That's good. And if the Dock can duplicate the functionality of the current Mac OS folder tab popup windows, why, even old curmudgeons like us may soon run out of things to complain about. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Don't look now, but here comes Crazy Steve's Discount WebObjects! Yes, aside from new details on Mac OS X, to us the big news from the keynote was Apple's massive price reduction on WebObjects, its super-cool web application development architecture. We'd always heard that WebObjects was by far and away the best application server environment available, but we've never taken the time to learn more about it. Why bother? After all, the thing had a sticker price of $50,000 for an unlimited use license and the developer tools-- that's the cost of a decent house in some areas of the country. So we stayed well away from WebObjects, lest we become attached to the feature set of a piece of software that would give sticker shock to anyone who doesn't wear a top hat and monocle and light cigars with hundred dollar bills.

But under Apple's new pricing plan, WebObjects has been slashed to a mere $699-- now that's a price even we can afford! Just think, folks; for less than half the price of an iMac DV Special Edition, you can get on board with the software that Apple uses for its own iCards site. And if you're concerned about it not being standards-compliant, fear not: a 100% pure Java-based version will ship later this year. Plus, have we mentioned that it's only $699? It probably costs you more to fill your gas tank these days.

To be honest, though, we aren't really in the market for web application software right now. What we're really hoping is that Apple carries Crazy Steve's wacky 98.6% discount across to other product lines. For instance, wouldn't you love to see iMac DVs going for $18 and change? Forget that "three pizzas a month" malarkey, we're talking the cost of two pizzas-- once. Buy one in every flavor-- heck, buy one in every flavor for every room. Or how about a high-end 500 MHz Power Mac G4 complete with an Apple Cinema Display for $104.82? Oh great, now we're drooling again...