Well, it's Seybold keynote day as far as Apple as concerned, and since we find ourselves with neither a physical presence at the event nor a webcast peek at the festivities, we're awfully grateful for MacMinute's darn-close-to-real-time updates on the sitch as it unfolds. As expected, Uncle Steve appeared in person instead of live via satellite (satellite broadcasts from Paris, possibly cost-effective; satellite broadcasts from six blocks from the Moscone Center, not so much), but to his credit, instead of swiping Phil Schiller's soapbox, he made his little intro and gracefully handed the reins to Phil. The man's a class act.

As for the real star of the show, however, that's clearly Mac OS X 10.1, which, as no one should be surprised to hear, is going to be available in stores as of this coming Saturday. Most reports imply that Apple will be handing out free upgrade CDs at its stores, so that apocryphal tale about customers having to bring in blank CD-R discs to have copies burned while they wait finally appears to be dying a horrible death. About all we can say for sure, though, is that Apple is giving away free copies of the 10.1 updater to Seybold attendees-- and we strongly doubt that the company is making people line up at the booth with blank CD-Rs in hand to get them. (Like we're ever lucky enough to be given something that perfect for our little show...)

So, Mac OS X users, save your blank discs for that "Songs With The Word 'Kidney' In The Title" compilation album you've been working on, and pop on down to your local Apple dealer this weekend to snag an upgrade to 10.1 for free. Details are sketchy, but we're guessing you won't need proof of purchase because the updater will be useless without an existing licensed copy of 10.0.x. Don't hold us to that, however, since at this point, anything can happen. For all we know, come Saturday Apple will require an original Mac OS X CD-ROM, the front cover of the owner's manual, a dated original sales receipt, a notarized affidavit from your local zoning board, a blood sample, and your first-born child before the stores will dish you a free CD. It's sort of a "wait and see" thing for now.

As for those of you who have been holding off on upgrading from Mac OS 9, if your hardware can handle the juice, it sounds like now is the time to consider making the leap to X. According to Uncle Steve, 10.1 represents the "mainstream release," as opposed to the "fools rush in" releases that the rest of us have been dutifully beta-testing for you all for the past year. At this point, you can be reasonably confident that upgrading to Mac OS X won't result in massive data loss or those pesky hardware fires we all try so hard to avoid, so if you've got a spare $129 just lying around and you don't mind dealing with a minor dearth of native applications, join us over in Aquaville. Everything's translucent and shiny here, and we're ever so happy. ("ONE OF US... ONE OF US...")

So now that Mac OS X 10.1 is here (sort of), all those software engineers that Apple has kept chained to their Macs and artificially awake through the use of Clockwork Orange-style eyelid-clips and highly illegal controlled substances can finally collapse in a quivering gelatinous mass and get a little rest, right? Wrong. You may indeed have gotten the impression from Uncle Steve's last Expo demo that this latest version of Apple's next-generation operating system is the absolute pinnacle of OS development and, as such, represents utter perfection and the endpoint of operating system evolution; if so, prepare yourself for a shock. There's a slight chance that Steve may have been engaging in a practice known as "marketing." If that's the case, then most likely 10.1 isn't perfect, and there's still room for improvement. Which means, of course, the shackles stay on and it's time to break out the horse amphetamines.

Indeed, faithful viewer CodeBitch notes that the Naked Mole Rat has just emerged from his latest hibernation to dish the dirt on Mac OS X's future in the post-10.1 era. We've already heard tell that Apple is whipping the code slaves to carve out yet another chunkstyle upgrade known as 10.2, code-named "Jaguar." But what of the more annoying and urgent holes still rattling around in 10.1? Well, according to His Ratness, Apple intends to address the "niggling performance and stability issues held over from Puma" by issuing "three interim updates" to 10.1 (just as 10.0 spawned 10.0.1, 10.0.2, and 10.0.4 prior to 10.1's release) before Jaguar sees the light of day at the next Macworld Expo in January-- if all goes according to plan.

The tricky bit (other than squeezing another few man-hours out of a development staff that hasn't slept since 1996) is that Apple obviously wants to prioritize appropriately, so that the most annoying and frequently-occurring bugs from a customer perspective get fixed in the earliest update. But work on 10.1.1 is already underway, and seeing as the Mac community at large won't even be able to get its hands on 10.1 until this Saturday, how are Apple's code slaves already supposed to know which bugs users are tripping across most often?

Well, according to the Rat, even as Apple seethes over less-than-legal leaks of its developmental OS builds to all the eyepatch-sporting, pegleg-hobbling, parrot-loving, hook-for-a-hand WAR3Z enthusiasts out there, some good does in fact come of rampant prerelease piracy: evidently Apple is sifting through feedback posted to the 'net by software pirates in order to get a jump on 10.1.1 and beyond. Sounds like maybe Steve should be flying the Jolly Roger once again.

At this point we classify it as a rumor, and here's hoping that it's only a rumor, because otherwise we may be in for some dark days ahead. Faithful viewer Stephanie alerted us to an alarming piece in today's New York Post which claims that software veep and OS wunderkind Avie Tevanian may be looking to leave Apple for greener pastures. (Or less-Aqua pastures. Whatever.) Normally we'd dismiss such a report as the fevered rantings of a heroin addict who accidentally mainlined Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, but given that the first "mainstream" version of Mac OS X is finally complete, that sounds like a milestone after which an antsy software guru might be willing to find another peg on which to hang his hat. So we're just a little anxious about this.

The man generally keeps a pretty low profile, publicly speaking, so some of you may not be aware of Avie's tremendous importance to Apple's post-Amelio resurgence. This is the guy who pretty much wrote the Mach kernel that purrs under the hood of Mac OS X, and was Steve's right hand man through most of the NeXT years; indeed, not to diminish the importance of all the code jockeys in the trenches who pushed themselves to the brink of human endurance to make the operating system what it is today, but if we had to pick one guy to credit for everything in the OS that isn't Steve's Aqua interface, we'd have to say that Avie is Mr. Mac OS X, no question.

So the word on the street (or, more accurately, the word in the Post) is that despite all that history with Steve, NeXT, and Apple, Avie's eye is wandering towards "the gains that Intel and Microsoft are making in improving computer speed and performance." Which would mean, of course, that Avie is now on crack. Other listed possibilities for his alleged plans to depart are a desire to work with Sony (why work for the "Sony of Personal Computing" when you can work for the real thing?) and just being "ready to do something else."

Whatever the reason, if Avie is leaving, apparently the search to find a replacement isn't going well. (Gee, apparently most people don't like the idea of reporting directly to Steve Jobs. Why do you suppose that is?) Until we get some solid confirmation, we're treating this as a nasty rumor, but if it turns out to be true and Avie wants to go, we certainly wouldn't slag him for it-- after all, he's done more for Apple than all but a select handful of outstanding individuals in the company's quarter-century in existence. Instead, we'll just blubber at his feet and beg him not to abandon us. But tactfully, right?