Update junkies, rejoice, for as faithful viewer Steve Williams informs us, Mac OS X 10.1.3 is finally here! Then again, if you're enough of a Software Update addict to bust out the party hats at news like this, you obviously don't need us telling you about it; you knew it was out roughly three seconds after the software hit Apple's servers last night, because your frequent clicking of the "Update Now" button finally bore fruit. In fact, we're guessing that you're probably really hung over right now following last night's drunken celebratory romp. We'll try to keep it down in here.

For those of you who don't spend every waking moment breathlessly checking to see if Apple has dished out another collection of enhancements and bug fixes, this might actually be news. Unfortunately, by the same token, it also might not constitute a reason to whoop loudly and break out the bubbly; it's just a point release, after all, and therefore it's not likely to make any more of an impression on you than 10.1.1 or 10.1.2 did. If Mac OS X updates were films, 10.1 would be a timeless classic like Citizen Kane, while 10.1.3 would be, say, Keeping The Faith-- entertaining and worth a rental, but relatively unremarkable and ultimately sort of forgettable. (Meanwhile, Windows XP would be Slam Dunk Ernest. 'Nuff said.)

According to Apple, here's what updating to 10.1.3 will get you: support for more third-party CD-R and CD-RW drives; support for more digital cameras; better frame rates with full-screen iTunes Visuals; DVD playback on external monitors for PowerBook G4 owners; a handful of security improvements, like SSL support in Mail; and that ever-nebulous "improved reliability" that we all know so well. So it's a solid update well worth installing just to keep current, and unless you were for some reason expecting spring-loaded folders, a fivefold increase in Finder performance, and a free deluxe pizza with Cheezy Bread™, you're not likely to be disappointed-- especially since the relatively minor issues documented so far at MacFixIt appear to indicate that Apple is past its "Installers of Death" phase.

So update away, if you're so inclined. We like to wait a healthy twenty-four hours just to see if the early adopters do us the favor of discovering any devastating bugs, but we're looking forward to the giddy thrill of clicking through an end-user license agreement, waiting twenty minutes, restarting, and basking in the glow of a new number in Mac OS X's About box-- despite the fact that the only improvement in 10.1.3 that's likely to affect us at all is the better iTunes frame rates. Oooooo. We suppose it's sad that something like this would be the highlight of our week, but heck, Buffy was a rerun last night...

Does everybody remember when the opening of new Apple retail stores was a weekly cause for celebration and excitement? Oh, for the days when we all thrilled to the appearance of new "Opening Soon" locations on Apple's web site! Unfortunately, once Apple got its current twenty-seven stores all up and running by last Christmas, suddenly the openings dried up completely. The last store to open was Cambridgeside, which went live on December 15th-- over two full months ago. We're starting to go through Grand Opening withdrawal, here.

And it's not like Apple planned on stopping at twenty-seven; heck, there are locations that were announced way back in last May which still aren't operational yet (like the Michigan Avenue store in Chicago, for example). We respect Apple's need to take a little breather after the breakneck pace at which it managed to crank out twenty-seven stores by the end of last year, but if the company is serious about meeting its retail coverage goal, it had better get cracking soon; a BusinessWeek article pointed out by faithful viewer David Lane claims that Apple "expects to have 124 stores by the end of 2003." That's a lot more stores than we expected Apple to open, which is great and all, but it's just not going to happen unless Apple gets back into its new-store-each-week groove.

(By the way, that BusinessWeek article is mostly about how Apple store employees supposedly aren't trained enough in the art of sales to close as many deals as they should. Maybe yes and maybe no, but the last thing we want to experience during an excursion to our local Apple boutique is high-pressure sales tactics. We've always found the Apple store staff to be friendly and helpful without being pushy. If they ever start saying "What's it gonna take to put you behind the wheel of a new Mac today?" and talking about the benefits of rustproofing and a protective undercoating, we're outta there. But we digress.)

Good news, though; the Grand Opening drought may indeed be drawing quickly to a close. If, like us, you routinely visit Apple's jobs page and search for the word "Genius" to discover upcoming retail store locations, you've probably known for a while that a new store is slated to open in Durham, North Carolina. What you may not know is what faithful viewer Jim Haverkamp just told us: that the mall in which that store will go, The Streets at Southpoint, is brand new and scheduled to open in just over two weeks' time. While it's by no means a sure thing, it might be reasonable to assume that Apple plans to open its store at the same time-- on Friday, March 8th. The fact that Apple is no longer hiring Mac Geniuses or a store manager for that location certainly hints at an imminent opening. Prepare for the Apple Retail Invasion, Wave 2!

Whoops, looks like while we were inadvertently microwaving a frozen burrito on the "Popcorn" setting, we accidentally reversed a tachyon flow and fell through a wormhole in the space-time continuum into an alternate universe. Don't you hate it when that happens? You know, we air-pop our popcorn anyway; we should really figure out some way of disabling that button on the microwave, because it only gets us into trouble.

So anyway, we're over here in this alternate reality, and as far as we can tell, for the most part it's pretty much the same as the old one; iPods still haven't dropped in price, we still have to dial 1 plus the area code even if we're calling next door, and the Sci-Fi Channel is still scheduled to air Kull the Conqueror tomorrow night. In fact, we're hard-pressed to find a single difference between this new universe and the one we were in before our one-on-a-zillion burrito accident, but faithful viewer Russell Hearn found one for us: in this reality, Slashdot has just started an Apple-specific section of its site.

Yup, you heard correctly: over here we've got http://apple.slashdot.org/, something that would never happen in the old universe. Slashdot, as most of you are aware, bills itself as "News for Nerds," features banner ads for the Overclockers Club, and is frequented primarily by diehard Linux geeks; in the reality to which we're accustomed, the merest mention of anything Apple-related on Slashdot typically leads to a few hundred instantaneous flames about overpriced hardware, proprietary and closed operating systems, etc. Over here, though, Slashdot has thoughtfully set up a whole separate Mac ghetto for its "sizable Apple population" and even went so far as to Aquafy its look slightly. Weird, wild stuff.

Wow, MacSlash and an Apple-targeted section of Slashdot? It's like we've fallen into a universe in which the open source core and BSD Unix layer of Mac OS X coupled with some really nifty Mac hardware is actually garnering some degree of respect from the hardcore geeks in the field. We think we'll stick around; this might be fun. Besides, we're out of burritos to microwave anyway.