It's been a long time coming, but we're pleased to announce that Apple finally has an operating system that's knocked Windows clear out of the number one spot on a yearly top ten list! That's right, everyone; Mac OS X has just kicked Windows 2000's blue-screening butt, and the lickable new operating system isn't even out yet. Okay, well, actually it's because Mac OS X isn't out yet that it has managed to unseat Windows 2000 from its perch at the top spot from the last two years running, but you have to accentuate the positive, you know?

Here's the deal: as faithful viewer Jeff Nouwen was kind enough to tell us, Wired has just posted its annual list of Vaporware products, and Mac OS X holds the dubious distinction of gracing the very top of the list. Let's give the tardy system a big round of applause, people, because Windows NT 5 topped the charts in 1998 and again in 1999 (after it was renamed Windows 2000). It must have taken a remarkable amount of effort and restraint for Apple's development team to hold off on releasing Mac OS X until the calendar year after Microsoft finally gave in and shipped the long-overdue update to Windows NT. (It's kind of like a blinking contest, or maybe a slightly less dangerous but much more expensive game of chicken.)

However, winning the Vaporware crown is not without its sacrifices. One gentleman who nominated Mac OS X for the award indicates that he "got so tired of waiting" for Apple to ship a "decent operating system" that he "became a PC enthusiast instead of a Mac enthusiast." Since that statement implies that he thinks that Microsoft has a "decent operating system" whereas Apple does not, we can only surmise that the poor guy has some serious personal problems that need resolving. (His admission that he "like[s] Bill Gates now" is further evidence of some deep-seated psychosis.) Still, insane or not, he's a member of the computer-buying public-- and he's not buying from Apple anymore.

But now that Apple has finally beat out Microsoft for the Vaporware award, hopefully the company can finally push the product out the door and start winning back some of its customers who have since defected. Unless, of course, Steve's not satisfied with only a single year at the top compared to Bill's two. He may go for the tie, or even a 3-to-2 win. If that's the case, expect him to announce Mac OS X's official release date when he delivers the keynote at Macworld Expo in a couple of weeks: January, 2003.

Are you the kind of person who ransacks the house when no one's home to find your Christmas presents early, opens them to find out what you got, carefully rewraps them to remove any signs of tampering, and then delivers an Oscar-worthy performance on Christmas morning as you open them "for the first time"? If so, then all that practice at feigning surprise will come in handy as we deliver the latest update on the G4 development front: according to AppleInsider, Motorola may be three to six months behind on the "enhanced" G4 architecture code-named "V'Ger." We're shocked! We're stunned! We're utterly floored! (Was that convincing?)

V'Ger, for those who have long since lost interest in the glacial pace of PowerPC development and have instead taken up the relatively exciting spectator sport of watching paint peel, has also been referred to as the "G4+" and the "G4e." It's a revamped version of the classic G4 that (we think-- it's been a while) features enhanced Altivec performance and also tosses copper tech into the mix. The upshot, for those of you watching the bottom line, is that V'Ger is supposed to run at 600-800 MHz. Depending on whether you're a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty sort of person, from a clock speed standpoint, that's either "20-60% faster than we've had for a year" or "still barely half of what the x86 architecture is already pumping out."

Here's the thing, though: earlier there were rumors that V'Ger (which has been in the works for a long time) would be available in reasonable quantities soon enough to power new Macs sometime during the "first calendar quarter of 2001." Now, though, AppleInsider reports that Motorola's "most recent target date" for the new chip is "next June." Before you freak out, this doesn't necessarily affect Apple's alleged plans to launch new Power Macs at the Expo in a couple of weeks; those systems (as well as the PowerBook G4) reportedly use overclocked PowerPC 7410 processors instead of V'Gers anyway. Whether or not that was the original plan is anyone's guess, but in any event, don't expect Apple to ship systems faster than 600 MHz anytime soon.

Okay, you can pick your jaw up off the floor now, before you trip on your tongue-- no one's buying your "I'm stunned beyond the ability for rational thought" act. You'd have to be congenitally clueless to be surprised by a delay in PowerPC clock speed advances at this point; they're just a part of life. But hey, console yourself with happy thoughts of the future. AppleInsider says that Apollo, the G4 due after V'Ger, forms the basis for Apple's plans to debut a quad-processor Power Mac with four gigahertz chips in early 2002. Tell you what: if Motorola actually pulls it off, then you'll see some genuine surprise around the AtAT headquarters. Even though Intel may well be at something like 2.6 GHz by then...

Speaking of advances in processor technology, Intel may have another innovation to add to its formidable list: the "ah, just ignore it" bug. The company discovered an "erratum" in the Pentium 4 chipset which delayed the chip's introduction by about a month, but has now decided to ship the processor with the bug still present since "the potential for damage appears to be very slight." (Have we told you about the time Jack went to the doctor and said "Doc, it hurts when I bend my elbow, and the doctor said "Don't bend your elbow"? Badum-ching! Thank you, thank you... We'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitstaff!)

According to an article at ZDNet, this particular Pentium 4 bug only afflicts users of multiple monitors. Since the vast majority of Wintel users only ever stick a single monitor on their systems, they'll be just fine. It's only the wacky goofballs who try to hook up a second display who will experience "slow processing or data corruption." (By "slow processing," we assume they mean "even slower processing," since for most tasks it seems that the P4 is already somehow slower than the Pentium III. Go figure.) Rather than delay its chip still further, Intel has evidently decided that users of multiple monitors form a minority small enough to alienate. The bug will be fixed eventually, but until then, instead of delaying the P4, Intel is advising PC manufacturers not to advertise dual-monitor capabilities.

What this means, of course, is that Pentium 4 might be even less of a threat to Apple's market share in the high-end content creation market. There are workarounds for configuring a Pentium 4-based system to use two monitors, but between the message sent to high-end customers by knowingly shipping the multiple monitors bug and the chip's lackluster performance, we're guessing that few graphic artists are going to want to dump their G4s for the wonderful world of Wintel anytime soon.