"But AtAT," so many of you have asked, "why no righteous indignation at the recently-posted system requirements for Mac OS X? After all, they are rather heftier than Apple initially promised." Well, folks, we're going to let you in on a little secret: system requirements for unshipping products are pretty much like presidential campaign promises. In other words, if you actually believe them, you've got no one to blame but yourself when they get shot all to hell.

See, we remember the uproar waaaaaay back when rumors were spreading that Rhapsody (for you young'uns, that's what we old timers called Mac OS X back when the project was launched in the late eighteenth century) was going to require a whopping 32 MB of RAM. At the time, the only people with that much RAM in their Macs were sultans, robber barons, and a few graphic artists. But instead of getting our knickers in a twist, we just shrugged it off; after all, we'd been waiting for Copland for so long (only to watch it get unceremoniously cancelled), we had a strange feeling that by the time Rhapsody ever saw the light of day, horseless carriages would dominate our city streets, torches would by replaced by machinery that harnessed the energy of lightning, and Macs would ship standard with the astronomical but required amount of 32 MB of RAM.

So that gives you a sense of historical context. Sure, prior to these latest requirements, Apple most recently stated that 64 MB of RAM would be enough. Now it's 128 MB (actually, it's been 128 MB since the last Stevenote, if you've been keeping up with your Apple press releases). Heck, instead of complaining, we're just hoping it doesn't double to 256 MB within the next six weeks. The simple fact is that by the time Apple actually gets around to shipping new Macs with Mac OS X pre-loaded and ready to rock, obviously 128 MB of installed RAM will be the standard even in the cheapest iMacs. And for those of you with otherwise Mac OS X-compatible systems that don't have enough RAMmy goodness, memory is dirt-cheap these days. With 128 MB going for less than fifty bucks, it's hard for us to stay mad at the Mac OS X development gang for giving themselves a little extra breathing room.

Then again, it's not just the necessary RAM that seems a little on the high side. Have you noticed how much disk space Apple says you'll need to install and run its next-generation OS? "At least 1 GB of available space." Okay, true, just as RAM is less expensive now than ever before, disk space is cheap and plentiful. But 1 GB? The original iBooks only shipped with 3. Let's put it this way-- you know that software company from Redmond who always gets blasted (uh, mostly by us) for producing bloatware? Let's compare Mac OS X's system requirements to those of various current incarnations of Windows, shall we?

• Windows Me basic install: 32 MB RAM, 480 MB disk space required
• Windows 2000 Professional: 64 MB RAM, 650 MB disk space required
• Windows 2000 Server: 128 MB RAM, 1 GB disk space required

Now, granted, Microsoft has a history of, er, "stretching the truth" a little when it comes to minimum system requirements. (Windows 2000 Server on a Pentium 133? That's like trying to stuff sixteen pounds of baloney into a single surgical glove; it's messy, doomed to failure, and someone's probably going to get hurt in the process.) Still, it worries us to see Apple positioning an operating system that's going to be run on basic iMacs by kids and grandmothers with the same posted requirements as Microsoft's high-end, industrial-strength server OS. Sure, Mac OS X is also a high-end, industrial-strength server OS, which means Granny and little Timmy are in for one hell of a ride. Still, we expect Apple's going to have to weather a few media cries of "bloat!" before the year is up. Here's hoping the Cupertino crew can back up those requirements with some serious power, speed, and lickable fun.

We're going to propose something slightly drastic, here: if Apple really expects us all to buy Mac hardware that's new enough and pumped-up enough to run Mac OS X as per the listed system requirements, the least the company could do is ship an operating system that doesn't cause our Macs to burst into flame. Who's with us on this? Show of hands?

Okay, so some of you are slowly raising your hands, drawing the unwanted attention of your employers as you slack off on their dime, idly wondering why we're suggesting something that should pretty much go without saying. It's like this: faithful viewer David Triska tipped us off to a new AppleInsider story about Apple's most recent frenzied progress in its race to get Mac OS X firmed up enough to meet Uncle Steve's March 24th do-or-die ship date. Generally speaking, its a fun romp through a whirlwind of internal beta builds that show steadily improving speed and stability-- and even a feature set that continues to expand at this late stage of the development process. But one detail really stuck in our collective craw: "Friday's build of the OS (4K46) was said to have fried one of the company's 533 MHz multiprocessor Power Mac G4 test machines."

Now, we're not entirely sure what AppleInsider means by "fried," but the connotations of the word (at least outside of a dining context) aren't exactly pretty. The best-case interpretation is that a bug in that beta build caused some form of hardware damage to, say, the memory controller on the Mac's logic board. The worst-case version involves a full-on Power Mac Flambé, which in turn triggered a halon release, the near deaths of two testing engineers, and a general state of higgledy-piggledy.

In any event, though, we have to assume that Apple leapt on that bug post-haste and stomped it into oblivion; reportedly beta builds 4K47 and 4K48 were both distributed internally just one day later, presumably in hopes of preventing further insurance rate hikes caused by additional fire- and/or halon-related injuries or deaths. Still, just hearing that an operating system could damage hardware gives us pause. We'd heard of Wintel-centric viruses that could indeed cause permanent physical harm to some systems, but we certainly never expected to have to worry about our own operating system "frying" our Macs. Suddenly kernel panics sound like a walk in the park. As the omnipresent Mr. Triska noted, "Power To Burn," indeed...

We at AtAT have harbored a seething animosity toward so-called "sport utility vehicles" in general (and Nissan Pathfinders in particular) ever since an exceedingly ill-timed accident during a family tragedy a few years ago. Had the woman who hit us been driving an actual car, both vehicles would likely have suffered little more than scratched bumpers instead of her Pathfinder causing over $1200 worth of damage to AtAT Mom's Corolla, which necessitated the involvement of the police and our subsequent absence at a family member's ceremonial cremation. (Of course, it also may have helped if the woman had a) been able to see over her own dashboard, and b) actually bothered to check a rear-view mirror to see if there happened to be a car behind her for the past three blocks before stopping in the middle of the street, shifting into reverse, and slamming on the accelerator. But that's a matter of opinion.)

Anyway, ever since then, we've been leery of SUVs, mostly because in recent years it appears that way too many people are driving them for the wrong reasons, and simply can't control them. We've had a tough time getting past the idea that all SUVs-- and especially all Pathfinders-- are the vehicles of Satan, and we don't mean that in a good way. Now, being generally tolerant types, it rankles us to have been carrying around this unshakable prejudice for so many years... which is why we're indebted to faithful viewer Mike for giving us a solid example of a Nissan Pathfinder that is clearly on the side of Truth and Light. Ladies and gentlemen, bow down before the mighty Pathintosh.

Yes, some ingenious Mac geek has built an LCD touch-screen into his Pathfinder's dashboard, installed various switches and infrared wireless controllers, wired it all up to a Pismo PowerBook G3 in a docking station in the back, and voilà: his 60 GB MP3 collection is at his fingertips. He even rewired the vehicle's existing steering-wheel-mounted audio control buttons to send commands to SoundJam instead of to the preinstalled CD player. And thanks to the magic of AirPort wireless networking, he can actually download new music from his home network while parked in his driveway. That's undeniably cool. While we still aren't planning on replacing the trusty AtATmobile with a sport-ute anytime this side of hell freezing over, it's nice to know that SUVs aren't entirely instruments of evil.