Let's face it-- it's rare for a sequel to surpass the quality of the original. In fact, we're not even going to rattle off the short list of movies that have successfully pulled off that stunt, because every time the Star Wars vs. The Empire Strikes Back debate arises anew, things get really tense around the AtAT studios, and frankly, we just don't need that right now. In any event, we can probably all agree on one thing: regardless of quality, commercial flops generally never get sequels in the first place, since the whole point of a sequel is to reap further profits from the success of the original. But Apple, as always, is thinking different. Ly. Whatever.

By now you've probably figured out what we're talking about, because in the past few years, Apple's really only had a single commercial failure: the everybody-loves-it, nobody-buys-it Power Mac G4 Cube. It takes a very discriminating breed of shopper to plunk down the extra ducats for a computer as stylish and well-designed as the Cube, and unfortunately for Apple, that type of shopper has turned out to be a rare breed indeed-- hence the ensuing rebates, price reductions, and that sizeable quarterly loss. But never forget that the Cube is Steve's baby, even more so than the iMac ever was; it's his own NeXT Cube taken to a higher level. That means he's not likely to drop the product, no matter how unprofitable it's been in the past. And so, word has it that he's called upon his merry band of worker elves to transform the Cube into the success story we all know it can be.

Mac OS Rumors watchdog David Triska informs us that those happy little rumormongers are rattling off all sorts of fun possibilities for the Cube's sequel. First, the grapevine whispers that the only Cubes still for sale are ones that are already in the channel; Apple's not currently producing any more of the current models. Yes, kids, if you look carefully, the Cube as we know it might have that "End Of Life" tattoo etched demurely into its lucite behind.

That sets the stage for a new model to strut its stuff sooner rather than later, and MOSR's extremely preliminary specs are intriguing, if not altogether trustworthy. Picture, if you will, the current Power Mac G4's 133 MHz bus and 4x AGP graphics slot paired up with processors running at up to 600 MHz. Now toss in a new nVIDIA graphics card, shoehorn in a pinch of expandability (we're guessing "CardBus slot," ourselves), wrap the whole thing up in a revamped "seamless" and "sleeker" enclosure that boasts a "very different appearance," slap an after-bundle-discount sticker price of $1299 on the low-end model, and voilà: a star is (re)born. Now all we need to do is wait for this puppy to premiere, and then see if it fares any better at the box office than its predecessor.

Well, that'll teach us not to whine. Remember last week, when we noted that for a general-purpose, consumers-love-it operating system, Mac OS X packed some pretty hefty system requirements? While plenty of Mac users are harping on the minimum RAM (128 MB, as opposed to the earlier promised 64 MB), we zeroed in on the disk space that Apple claims is necessary to install and run its zaftig new OS: 1 GB of space available on the boot drive. We noted that Microsoft only requires that much disk space for Windows 2000 Server, whereas a basic install of Windows Me needs less than half that amount. Of course, there's also the fact that Microsoft's system requirements are written by hellbound lying sacks of... uh, but we digress.

Anyway, the point. Well, the point is, in the week since we noted the seemingly expansive chunk of hard drive necessary to house Mac OS X, Apple apparently heard our complaint, and did something about it. For you see, faithful viewer Phillip (Right Eye) Hall had the perspicacity to notice that, sometime in the intervening eight days since our report on Mac OS X's disk-hungry appetite, Apple made a subtle unannounced change: now, if you load up the "Mac OS X Requirements" page, you'll notice that suddenly Mac OS X needs 1.5 GB of disk space. Leon's getting larger!

So much for running Mac OS X on our rev. A iBook; technically, yeah, we could do it-- who needs applications and documents anyway, right? We're hard-pressed to imagine just what could happen this late in the development process that suddenly tacked an extra 50% onto the disk space requirement. Maybe Mac OS X's just nervous; it's going to greet a critical public in a month's time, so is it so far-fetched that maybe it's been stress-eating and porking up a little? Something tells us that a certain operating system we know has been mixing Snacky Cakes and Weight Gain 4000-- or maybe Apple just did it to spite us. Who knows? All we can say is, if the extra 500 MB is for a slew of high-quality QuickTime movie trailers, we sure hope Apple makes it an optional install.

Bummed because you won't be in Tokyo next week to bask in the Blinding Glory of Steve at the Macworld Expo keynote? Despondent because as of yet we know of no one who's announced a webcast of the momentous event? Well, fret no longer! Sure, airfare to Tokyo is pricey, especially less than a week before your travel date-- but if you've got a decent travel agent, we bet he or she can get you to Croydon for hundreds of dollars less.

"That's nice," you're probably thinking, "but I'm looking for a way to watch the Stevenote, not a nature tour of the woodlands in and around London's southern suburbs." Well, while we understand that the "Secret Places of Happy Valley" are lovely this time of year, we actually had something else in mind. According to The Register, the Croydon branch of the UK computer chain "PC World" is planning to broadcast Steve's big speech live via satellite "onto the big screen." This isn't a hoax; Apple's own web site confirms the Croydon shindig. Reportedly PC World will even be handing out free sushi to get people into a Tokyo mood. So if you just have to catch Steve's next keynote and you can't get all the way to Tokyo, hie thee to Croydon for the next best thing!

One word of warning, however: don't forget the time difference. Since Croydon isn't exactly down the street from the Land of the Rising Sun, in order to screen the Stevenote live, PC World is opening its doors at 11:30 PM local time; Steve himself will probably take the stage at roughly 1 AM, and PC World hopes to start kicking sleep-deprived and adrenaline-juiced Mac fans out the door at about 3 AM-- so plan accordingly. And one last thing: if PC World in Croydon can get the keynote live via satellite, odds are it'll crop up in other locations, too. You've been warned; don't go blaming us if you sell your car for airfare to Croydon, and then you find out that the CompUSA down the street's getting the feed too. Them's the risks that every Steve-chaser must take.