Well, our guess is that if you're enough of a bleeding-edge early adopter to be running Mac OS X in the first place, you probably already knew about this mere seconds after it became public-- but in any case, version 10.0.4 of that illustrious operating system is finally available for your Software Updating pleasure. So if you're slovenly enough still to be running 10.0.3 (or, worse yet, the desperately antiquated 10.0.1 or 10.0), what in Steve's name are you waiting for? Get on the stick, click that "Search For Updates Now" button, and march bravely into the final third of June. You won't be sorry.

For our part, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff grabbed the update early last night and applied it without incident. As you'd expect with the minuscule increase in its version number, though, 10.0.4 isn't exactly an earth-shattering upgrade; in fact, we honestly didn't notice any change other than the build number in the About box. There's still no DVD playback-- a feature which is now officially late, given that "sometime in the spring" has come and gone. On our Pismo, at least, the brightness and volume keys still don't work reliably, although the Mute button seems to function perfectly (albeit with no visual feedback). Application launches felt a smidge faster, but we had chalked that up to the "optimizing" pre-binding process triggered by each update. To be honest, if we were limited purely to our own observation, we'd be wondering whether Apple had shipped 12 MB of piping hot nothing.

Instead, thanks to a link over at MacFixit, we raided Apple's Tech Info Library and found the complete Mac OS X 10.0.4 Release Notes. Well, whaddaya know? Never let it be said that Apple's engineers aren't a pack of busy little beavers, because 10.0.4 apparently fixes a ton of problems which we seem to have been lucky enough to have completely avoided in the first place. Still, there are no fewer than 38 individual "enhancements" listed, falling under the broad categories of "USB-Related," "Classic-Related," "Internet- and Networking-Related," and "Other." Odds are you'll find at least one improvement that'll slap a grin on your face.

For us, it was #32: "Enhances PowerBook battery power conservation when in sleep mode." We haven't had it installed long enough to put its through its paces, but hopefully that means our Pismo can sleep for an hour without cranking through forty minutes' worth of juice. We always just assumed it was sleep-processing, and that someday we'd wake it up to find it had calculated a three-million-digit prime number or something. In a way we're a little disappointed that we won't be the toast of the International Order of Math Geeks anytime soon, but hey, at least we'll be able to tote our PowerBook across town without it chewing through half a battery charge. As far as consolation prizes go, we'll take it.

Gee, and here we thought that Macworld Expo's online vendor database was just sorely incomplete. Instead, it appears that a glaring omission from the exhibitor list is indeed accurate, and therefore the event which Apple has described as "Mac OS X's coming-out party" will be short one very important guest: no less a giant than Adobe Systems Incorporated. This is not a drill, people! The company whose very name is synonymous with "Big-Gun Mac Graphics Software"-- the company who makes Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign, and about a gazillion other Very Important Applications to the Mac platform-- is skipping the Expo for the first time in... well, ever, as far as we know. (Adobe's certainly been at every East Coast Expo we've attended, and we haven't missed one since 1994.)

At first we just figured this was a rumor stemming from the company's hopefully-erroneous absence from the vendor list, but as agitated faithful viewer Ophion pointed out, in his latest Inter@ctive Week article, Matthew Rothenberg reports that "citing budget constraints, [Adobe] this week acknowledged that it is breaking precedent and skipping the show." Needless to say, this worrisome development has given us a raging case of the heebie-jeebies. We've always had our doubts about Adobe's commitment to Mac OS X, but to miss the coming-out party? So much for a Carbonized Photoshop in time for Mac OS X's long-awaited launch onto the screens of mainstream Macs-- not that Adobe ever promised that, of course, but it sure would have been a nice surprise.

Given that one of the Mac's last strongholds is the graphic design market, we'd go so far as to say that Mac OS X-native versions of Photoshop and Illustrator are at least as (and possibly even more) important to the operating system's acceptance and success than Microsoft Office... so you can understand our edginess at Adobe's seemingly lukewarm commitment to the platform. Yes, Acrobat Reader 5 has already been Carbonized. Yes, company spokespeople still claim that "most of Adobe's core products will be Carbonized in their next major revs." Yes, the current economy is such that skipping a major trade show due to budget constraints shouldn't seem like a particularly unusual thing to do. Still, until we're actually running a Mac OS X-native version of Photoshop on our PowerBook, we're probably going to have a funny feeling in our tummies about all this.

What better way to get a belated start on the weekend than by contemplating neuroscientists with Mac-themed body art? After all, nothing says Friday in the world of Apple like high-profile, well-respected brain researchers sportin' some righteous ink. And that's why we all owe a debt of gratitude to faithful viewer Sunflower, who noted a profile of one Dr. Christof Koch in the July issue of Scientific American.

If all you do is take a quick glance at the photo in the article, you might come away with the notion that Dr. Koch is all about scary shiny pink sofas and socks that are louder than your average sonic boom. You actually have to read the article (or, um, use your browser's "Find" feature) to unearth this little gem: "Neurobiologists have since given up the notion that Koch may be dangerously offbeat, despite his having tattooed his arm last summer with the Apple Computer logo to demonstrate his love of the Macintosh (a zeal not even matched by Steve Jobs)."

Yes, kiddies, this esteemed neuroscientist (who is looking for a "discrete set of neurons... responsible for generating consciousness") may not bleed six colors, but we bet he bled when he had six colors pumped into his flesh by a whirring tat gun. Scientific American only mentions the Mark of Apple in passing, and it's not evident in the aforementioned pink-sofa-and-bright-socks photo; fear not, though, because Sunflower did a little digging and found Dr. Koch's personal home page, on which the man is pictured showing off the rainbow Apple logo emblazoned on his right shoulder. (There's a close-up photo as well.) Now that's a fan, ladies and gents.

In Dr. Koch's own words, "together with the Boeing B-747 Jumbo Jet and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Apple Macintosh is the most beautiful and elegant artifact of the 20th century. A perfect marriage of form with function. And to answer the obvious question, yes, this tattoo will remain this crisp and cool until the day I die." Memo to Steve: if researching the biology of consciousness and having the Apple logo permanently drilled into his flesh (not to mention owning a couch that pink) doesn't make this guy AppleMaster material, your standards are set impossibly high. We look forward to Dr. Koch's imminent induction.