And thus the controversy ended-- not with a bang, but a press release. For days, people have been raising their eyebrows at email messages received by the occasional Mac OS X customer, indicating that a "backlog" might cause the product not to ship when originally anticipated. Yesterday things got even weirder, as we determined that all of the initial backlog messages sent out turned out to be for Canadian customers-- until a flood of reports indicated that several U.S. residents had also received similar email during the day.

But now, the mysterious Backlog Email Mystery is just another footnote in the long, strange history of Mac OS X's journey down the road to release. Apple has just announced that its new operating system has officially reached "golden master" status, meaning that it's done and in the hands of the manufacturing gnomes, who are probably even now cranking out CD-ROMs by the hundreds. Soon those magical Happy Disks will be slapped into boxes, sealed with shrinkwrap, and shipped to slavering Mac fans all over the world. We never thought we'd get to say this and actually mean it, but... Mac OS X is almost here.

Needless to say, if Mac OS X is indeed complete and in the manufacturing stage, given that Apple's still got over two full weeks before the official March 24th ship date arrives, we can't ascribe any serious merit to those anomalous backlog warnings. It shouldn't take two weeks to make the physical media and stuff things into boxes, unless Uncle Steve is insisting on the superior quality of installer media hand-etched by trained Trappist monks and packaged in boxes individually signed and numbered by Avie Tevanian himself. Clearly those "sorry for the backorder" messages can be safely ignored with impunity-- and if they still put you a little on-edge, according to MacNN, now even Apple has finally acknowledged that "the emails many readers received yesterday" apologizing for the backorder "were sent out in error... there will be no delay."

So this is it, people: just over two weeks and counting. Frankly, it just never seemed real to us until we heard about the golden master-- and now we suddenly find ourselves giddy with anticipation. Prepare yourselves, for we are peering into the dawn of the Mac's new golden age... an age of unblazed trails, tremendous opportunities, and boundless possibilities. (Or something.)

We'll be honest, here; after last week's episode of Buffy (which was the emotional equivalent of a crowbar to the cranium), we were actually looking forward to a rerun. So we tuned in as usual, taking refuge in the comfy familiarity of events we'd seen before-- and while the exploits of the Buffster and her buds yielded no surprises, we wound up getting smacked upside the head by a new Apple commercial, instead. Go figure.

And when we say "new Apple commercial," we're not talking about those five new ads featuring the hippy-trippy swirling visuals of iTunes, either-- which, we might add, we haven't seen anywhere outside of Apple's web site to date. Nope, the shiny new commercial of which we speak was a sneak attack, plain and simple; here we've been keeping our eyes and ears open for the ad series introduced in Steve's last keynote, and instead we get walloped by something completely different. It's a full minute long, it highlights the Mac's newfound out-of-the-box ability to burn custom audio CDs, and it features an assemblage of musicians larger and more varied than anyone's seen since "We Are The World" first assaulted our sensibilities. (Nothing against the cause it helped, of course, but man that song was annoying.)

Indeed, the mix of talent showcased in Apple's new "Rip. Mix. Burn." commercial looks like "U.S.A. For Africa"'s cooler, hipper roommate. According to Apple's press release about the ad, the featured performers include "Barry White, George Clinton, Liz Phair, Steve Harwell of Smashmouth, De La Soul, Lil' Kim, Ziggy Marley, Chuck Berry, Dwight Yoakam, Exene Cervenka and Deep Dish." Exene Cervenka? Holy yikes, instead of triggering our gag reflex by signing the latest comer in the Backstreet-98-Syncs boy band legacy and whoever's trying to out-Britney Britney Spears this week, Apple threw a member of the legendary X in there. Somebody get us a paper bag, 'cause we're hyperventilating over here.

We hadn't seen Apple's press release before settling in to watch TV for the evening, but we caught two of the commercial's three airings anyway by virtue of our Tuesday night vampire jones; it aired once during Buffy and again during Angel. We missed the third showing, of course, since Frasier runs opposite Angel, but we do have it on tape-- still further evidence that Apple has given up on the mass market at large and is now marketing its wares directly to the AtAT staff. We're not entirely sure how wise a business decision that is, but heck, we'll take whatever extra Mac exposure in our regular viewing schedule that Apple wants to throw at us.

Ever since Imatec's ColorSync patent infringement lawsuit against Apple was basically laughed out of court, have you felt that there's something missing from the Mac Drama landscape? Perhaps it's the gaping hole left by the departure of the threat of a multibillion-dollar penalty hanging over Apple's head; between the $1.1 billion Imatec was suing for and the possibility of treble damages if Apple was shown to have wilfully and knowingly infringed, it was a long shot, but there was a chance that Apple would be put out of business overnight. We're happy for Apple and everything, but something that exciting is hard to give up.

Well, it's not quite the same thing, but faithful viewer Shane Burgess clued us in on some fun litigation that might be hitting the courts soon-- and while it may not affect Apple's bankroll directly, it could very well have a profound impact on the company's strategy moving forward. According to the New York Times, a bankruptcy court just gave permission for a group of creditors to sue PowerPC-maker Motorola for "more than $2 billion in damages... for Iridium and another $3.5 billion for damages they suffered as investors in Iridium." Oooooh, that's gonna leave a mark!

Iridium was apparently a company that Motorola set up almost a decade ago to put a huge and expensive network of satellites into orbit and then sell mobile phones that use those satellites for communication. The company went public in 1997, but the phones never caught on, and Iridium eventually went bankrupt and left a slew of creditors in the lurch. What the bankruptcy court has decided, however, is that those creditors are now allowed to sue Motorola instead, contending that Motorola "effectively operated the company" (Motorola employees, for instance, sat on Iridium's board of directors) even after the spin-off and IPO.

Needless to say, this threat of a potential $5.5 billion loss doesn't come at a happy time for Motorola, who has been laying off employees at an alarming rate even as the company warns that it may announce its first quarterly loss in fifteen years. On the off-chance that this lawsuit manages to cripple the company badly enough to affect the future of the PowerPC, you can bet that Apple's product line would have to change pretty drastically. So no, it's no Imatec-- but it'll do in a pinch.