Ladies and gentlemen, we have confirmation-- and an explanation, of sorts. Yesterday we told you that faithful viewer Scott Learmonth received email from the Apple Store informing him that his order for Mac OS X may not ship when anticipated. We found this passing strange for several reasons. For one thing, whereas hundreds (hopefully thousands) of Mac users must have preordered Mac OS X by now, Scott's was the only report we'd received about a Mac OS X backorder notice. (Heck, we've preordered the lickable new OS, and we sure didn't get any email about it shipping late.) For another, since Mac OS X hasn't been pressed yet, the idea of a backorder seems somewhat anomalous; why couldn't Apple just crank out enough copies to fulfill all preorders in its first run? Mac OS X may be in the Final Candidate stage, but it's not Golden Master quite yet.

Since yesterday, however, we had since received three more reports from Apple Store customers who preordered Mac OS X and have since been notified via email that their orders may not ship when expected-- so if it was just an Apple Store glitch, it wasn't limited just to Scott. But here's the thing: Scott wrote back to tell us that he's in Canada. (Now's the part where you make an "ohhhh" sound, narrow your eyes, and nod your head sagely.) Furthermore, faithful viewers Rick Krutina and Georges also received the Mac OS X backorder email, and they, too, are both in Canada. While backorder victim #4, faithful viewer Joe Shmoe, didn't specify his location, his email appears to have originated from the Ottawa area. Clearly, this "backordered Mac OS X" phenomenon is endemic to the Great White North.

So does this mean Canadian Mac fans won't get Mac OS X until after the 24th? Nah, we bet they'll get it pretty much when U.S. customers do. We've seen the actual text of the email in question, and it makes no reference to an actual ship date at all-- it just says that Mac OS X is "experiencing a greater backlog delay than originally anticipated." Maybe Apple Canada is just a) overly optimistic, and "originally anticipated" a ship date sooner than March 24th for some reason, and b) exceedingly polite, and felt compelled to apologize for Apple's own published Mac OS X ship date. (Or it could just be an AppleScript gone horribly awry.)

On the other hand, if you choose to interpret the data as implying that the mighty nation of Canada will indeed get Mac OS X later than we will in these here United States, you can stop waving the Stars and Stripes and doing the "We're First" dance-- Australia's getting it before any of us. Yup, the MacEvangeList confirmed with Apple Australia that Mac OS X will arrive down under on March 24th local time-- which is March 23rd here in the U.S. So if you really want your copy of Apple's new operating system as early as possible, start booking those flights now...

UPDATE: Suddenly, reports are coming in from all stations-- it's no longer a Canada thing, people. Faithful viewer Jonathan Levenson got a backorder apology, too, but he's in Texas. (Yes, that's almost another country, but it doesn't quite count.) And in the last few minutes, two more reports zipped in-- from faithful viewers Chris and Mike, both in Massachusetts. And in just the time it took to read those, three more reports showed up, from Billy, Kookstick, and Sarah Bombich. It's a backlog avalanche! So now it appears that Canadian customers just got their notices first. Here's hoping these apologies are just automated fluff with no actual bearing on Mac OS X's actual ship date.

We all whined like babies for a year while the G4 languished at 500 MHz and Intel zipped onward to 1 GHz and beyond. "Why can't Motorola do that?" we moaned. Sure, we knew that clock speed alone is a fairly meaningless measurement of a processor's overall performance, but the bottom line is, the Unwashed Masses look at megahertz when shopping for one o' them thar "personal computers," and Apple was getting the tar beat out of it when shoppers did a price-per-megahertz comparison. Plus there's the whole issue of bragging rights. What with the G4's supercomputer-level performance, we knew we had the power; now we wanted the clock cycles to back it up.

Well, we took a quantum leap forward in the clock speed department this year, when Apple introduced the Power Mac G4 running at 733 MHz. But now that those oh-so-zippy machines are finally shipping, people have had a chance to take them for a spin-- and not everybody is happy about what they're finding. According to Mac OS Rumors, "the numbers so far do look bad." Whatever architectural changes that Motorola added to the G4 in order to boost its clock speed also seem to have reduced the performance-per-cycle significantly in some situations. In theory, the 733 MHz G4+ ought to run rings around a 533 MHz G4 in pretty much any scenario-- but reportedly sometimes the 533 MHz chip comes out ahead.

While we hope this is just a temporary anomaly that'll vanish once Apple's operating systems are further optimized for the new chips, we can't help but wonder if Motorola finally buckled under the pressure and followed in Intel's footsteps: higher clock speeds, no matter what. Remember, people, a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 is slower than a 1 GHz Pentium III in certain scenarios; doesn't this whole G4-vs.-G4+ thing sound eerily similar? We'll reserve final judgment until some benchmarks appear under Mac OS X, but we're starting to worry that when we clamored for "higher clock speeds at any cost," Motorola took us seriously.

We wouldn't exactly consider it news, per se, but a new report by research firm Harris Interactive reveals that, among 6500 computer purchasers in the first three quarters of last year, Apple's customers were the most loyal. Apparently the repurchase rate among Mac owners was a whopping 53%, meaning that "just over half of Mac owners who bought a personal computer... repurchased a Mac." We here at AtAT might almost have been surprised by that discovery-- if a quick glance around our studios didn't reveal Macs of all shapes and sizes sitting on just about every level surface. Yes, when it comes time to buy another computer, Mac owners tend to buy more Macs. Alert the media.

In any case, it's nice to have that seemingly obvious fact borne out by the numbers. Apple's repurchase rate topped the list, beating out Gateway (45%), Dell (40%), Hewlett-Packard (33%), Compaq (29%), and IBM (a somewhat dismal 9%). Clearly if Apple can get its foot in the door and a Mac on the table, the company stands a good chance of gaining a repeat customer for life-- not a bad strategy at all. Unfortunately, we're still left staring at a big, fat "if."

See, in order for that plan to work, Apple needs to hook first-time buyers and turn them into chronic Mac-purchasers. Unfortunately, Harris also found that first-time buyers aren't exactly flocking to Apple in droves. Gateway ranked tops amongst people buying their first computer, and HP did quite well, there, too-- both companies apparently sold more systems to newbies than to repeat customers. Apple isn't even mentioned in this context. We know that the original iMacs sold in disproportionate numbers to first-time buyers and Wintel switchers, but that was a long time ago.

Still, we remain hopeful that Apple will snag a decent chunk of the remaining untapped market with its bold new Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian iMacs; we finally made our peace with those patterns when we realized that Apple is intelligently targeting those few holdouts who can afford a computer, but just haven't seen one... striking enough to purchase. If the new iMacs bring fresh blood to the platform-- say, enough to get Apple listed in the first-time buyers section of the next Harris poll-- we'll happily accept whatever zany patterns Apple chooses to introduce. "Teflon Herringbone," anyone?