If you're spooked by the unfamiliar sound in the Mac world right about now, don't get too freaked out-- that's just silence. See, as a community we're in sort of a "quiet time" right now, for two reasons. First of all, we've got a post-Expo lull casting its soporific pall over everything, which always lands us squarely in Dullsville. To make matters worse, at the same time, the loudest among us are deeply entrenched in the process of, er, "testing" the public beta of Mac OS X. Which means that the faint buzz you hear in the background is the clicking of mice and the tapping of keys as Mac users the world over try to come to terms with this candy-colored operating system that Apple assures us is a huge step forward and the future of the Mac.

So while the tumbleweeds roll through the empty streets, geeks like us try to figure out what will happen to the world we know and love over the course of the next couple of years. When Mac OS X becomes the Mac OS "early next year" (we'll believe it when we see it, Steve), a lot of people are going to have to get used to an awful lot of changes. And the big reason that the Mac world seems so quiet to some of you right now is because you aren't tuning in to the right stations. That soft tapping and clicking is the sound of beta testers composing vast screeds about the Dock, the Classic environment, the lack of an Apple menu, etc. These days, all the noise is about the beta, and most of it is about how far Apple has to go before Mac OS X turns into something we'd feel comfortable putting in the hands of the average shmoe, or worse-- the average shmoe's parents.

If you want a break from the peace and quiet and would rather tune in to the overwhelming din of beta criticism (both positive and negative), try sampling MacInTouch's collection of reader reports. We warn you, though; metaphorically speaking, it's at least as long as, say, "Free Bird" or most Meat Loaf songs-- and you're only listening to Part 3. The thing that gets our stomachs turned the wrong way 'round is all the commentary about how much stuff doesn't work, how much stuff only works when the user really knows what he or she is doing, and how much of the innate complexity of Mac OS X's underpinnings still shows through the candy-colored facade.

Not that Mac OS 9 is exactly a paragon of Zen simplicity, mind you, and there are interface aspects of Mac OS X in its current form that are probably lots easier for novices to deal with-- such as the more rigid organizational structure of the file system, the Dock, and the new Finder. But in exchange for more simplicity on the surface (which many seasoned Mac veterans will find restrictive and chafing), Mac OS X also has a super-size dose of complexity roiling around in its guts, and it's imperative that Apple manages to prevent users from ever needing to go there. Your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff has been using Unix in various forms for ten or twelve years, now; when we took a peek under the hood of Mac OS X, we were somewhat tickled by being able to force-quit applications by grepping through a ps list for a pid and issuing a kill -9 from a terminal window-- but frankly, the thought of our less-geeky friends being exposed to this stuff has us reaching for the Maalox.

So in our opinion, the bottom line here is this: prior to Mac OS X, the Mac OS has been a fundamentally simpler solution for computer users who just want to get their computing done without all that tedious mucking about with the system's innards, while Windows has been "almost as good" by slapping a pretty (well, relatively speaking, anyway) face on top of a really nasty-looking substructure-- it's fine when it works, and a nightmare when it doesn't. Mac OS X seems to change all that, and now Apple has to play Microsoft's game by sticking an easy-to-use interface on top of a scary-looking-- though powerful-- engine. And the future of the Mac hinges almost entirely on how well Apple manages to pull this off. If anyone can do it, Apple can, but we'll say this: if Apple really does ship Mac OS X 1.0 "early next year" and it's actually something we'd like to put in front of our grandparents, we'll be pleasantly surprised. Or, more accurately, pleasantly amazed, stunned, and shocked into a state of catatonia. But you can be sure we'll be grinning like idiots until we recover.

Apart from all the beta buzz, most of the Apple world is pretty darn quiet these post-Expo days. But fear not for your recommended daily requirement of drama, because you know what a news lull means: it's time to revive the long-standing tradition of digging up dusty old rumors that still haven't borne fruit! Let's see, what shall it be this time? The Apple PDA? The Disney buyout? The Mac OS X "Red Box," providing full compatibility with all Windows applications? Picking one is always the toughest part; they're all like dear old friends to us.

Luckily, Mac OS Rumors has gone and chosen one for us: the Apple retail store. When faced with often less-than-perfect retail incarnations such as the store-within-a-store boutique at CompUSA (or outright brain-chewing disasters like iMacs at Best Buy), the concept of honest-to-goodness, Apple-owned and -operated retail outlets is like some sort of beautiful dream. Picture, if you will, a Mac store with consistently knowledgeable salespeople, the latest gear you need in stock and on the shelf, demo models powered up and functional, and no stocking ladders blocking the product displays. Why, it'd almost be enough to make us give up mail-order completely. Almost. And assuming that this Apple Store scheme ever actually comes to pass.

MOSR's latest info on this long-standing dream indicates that we may finally hear an announcement of brick-and-mortar Apple Stores at Steve's next big Mac keynote-- at Macworld Expo in January. Reportedly the scheme involves a "highly centralized" management model, which will let Apple watch and control each location via the 'net. For that reason (as well as for product demonstrating purposes, we expect), each store would have a high-speed Internet connection, possibly provided by EarthLink-- who, in return, would get its own store-within-a-store in each Apple retail center. Sounds good to us; where do we sign up?

Of course, the announcement is simply the first step; then Apple would actually have to build the darn things, staff them, pump them full of product, and open the doors. A January announcement would mean we probably wouldn't be able to push a cart down Apple's translucent aisles until mid-2001 at the earliest. So perhaps the real news here is the startling fact pointed out by faithful viewer David Puett: Mac OS Rumors has now been updated for three weekdays in a row, and for almost a full week before that. Is it an omen?

Speaking of rumors of long-awaited products, AppleInsider's got an update on another one that's been evading us all for months: the new PowerBook. And no, we're not counting the current "Pismo" release in this context, because while Pismo did add a few goodies that its predecessor Lombard lacked (such as FireWire and AirPort compatibility), they look almost exactly the same. When the new laptop finally debuted last February, rumors of Pismo's next-generation enclosure turned out to be utterly false-- whether or not that was because Apple ditched the new case at the last minute is a matter of some debate. In any event, we're all still waiting for the PowerBook to catch up to its Mac brethren, stylistically speaking.

Think about it; Apple's consumer products sport both bright colors and muted tones, done in translucent plastics with varied textures and inviting, swoopy curves. On the professional side, you've got slightly more toned-down curves, and Graphite, Platinum, silver, and clear pervading the G4 and the Cube-- but the PowerBook is still all-black, its sole concession to the translucent revolution its "Bronze" keyboard and trackpad button, introduced with last year's model. Sure, the PowerBook is still a thing of understated beauty, but its overly-conservative styling sticks out in Apple's product grid like a three-piece suit at a clambake.

Thank heaven, then, that the PowerBook G4 (reportedly code-named "Mercury") will premiere in a stunning new enclosure that may well turn out to be the envy of the product line. AppleInsider says to expect some iBook-like changes, such as a flat trackpad, a latchless closing mechanism and a slightly rounder shape. But Mercury's overall design, while thinner, is expected to be "only slightly" different than the Lombard/Pismo look-- except in color. Flat black is out, and Mercury will instead boast "dark blue-grey and Graphite" for its grips and accents, while the rest of the case is said to be transparent-over-black just like Apple's Pro Mouse, thus sharing that remarkable peripheral's liquid-metal look. Mmmmm... We can almost taste it from here. Unfortunately, we personally still don't expect to see the PowerBook G4 until January, so until then, black it is. But hey, at least black goes with everything.