You wanted it, and now you've got it-- and "it" is the Steve-given right to buy an eMac even if you're not somehow affiliated with an educational institution. That's right, people; yesterday Apple issued an official press release confirming that, whether you've already completed your stint in higher learning or you just have no inclination for book-learnin' whatsoever, the only qualification you now need to score yourself Apple's formerly-education-only "Most Affordable G4 System Ever" is enough cash or plastic to cover the bill. Quoth His Steveness, "consumers have pounded on the table demanding to buy the eMac, and we agree." Which means you can stop hammering your fists into the furniture, guys; mission accomplished, so start reaching for your wallets. (By the way, it appears that the most effective way to change Apple policy is to engage in physical abuse of a dining room set. Whodathunkit?)

Now, not surprisingly, there are a few minor catches with this deal. For one thing, the consumer eMac costs a hundred smackers more than the base institutional education model, so expect to dish out $1099 instead of keeping your tab a hair under a grand. For another, there's no option to order a consumer model configured with a combo drive, so if you're not comfortable with the idea of buying an eMac with just a CD-RW drive because you have a burning need to see the director's cut of the remake of Rollerball on a 17-inch computer screen, well, you're just going to have to enroll at a nearby college and start working towards a communications degree or something. But heck, it's a small price to pay to have an eMac that's capable of showing the fabled alternate ending in which the Rollerballers set aside their differences, drag the director on-camera, and hold him down while they tattoo the phrase "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" across his forehead.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of slight catches for Apple, too; while the company is likely to enjoy a nifty boost to its unit sales due to strong consumer eMac demand, Captain Steve may suffer a bit of a credibility hit for announcing the official Death of the CRT six months ago and then building Apple's latest product around one of the suckers. The message, we think, is clear: "CRTs are super-lame because they're big, heavy, and they suck down power like it's going out of style-- here, buy one!" There's also the fact that Apple obviously meant for the "e" in "eMac" to stand for "education," and now that the product is just another consumer product, the company is going to have to come up with some other explanation if it wants to keep the name without baffling the easily-confused. After all, now there's a CRT G3 iMac, an LCD G4 iMac, and a CRT G4 eMac; what's that all about? May we suggest a press release clarifying that the "e" actually stands for "extreme"? That oughta play in Peoria.

When all's said and done, though, if you're willing to rest your eyes on a high-quality flat-screen short-yoke 17-inch CRT instead of a 15-inch LCD on a shiny metal arm, well, the eMac is a spiffy way to save a few bucks on a G4 all-in-one. And if there was no way you could afford a G4 iMac and you were therefore about to settle for an old-school G3 model instead, suddenly you've got a much more attractive option in the eMac-- provided you can sell enough plasma to make up the price difference. Considering all you get for an extra few hundred bucks, we strongly recommend that you squeeze out every pint you can. And don't forget-- if you're a starving college student or an underpaid schoolteacher, the educational model is cheaper still. C'mon, how can you possibly go wrong?

Say, remember that wacky brouhaha over the proposed MPEG-4 licensing terms? The one that got Phil Schiller all riled up during last February's QuickTime Live keynote? If not, the gist is that Apple was holding off on shipping the allegedly almost-ready-for-prime-time QuickTime 6 (which includes full MPEG-4 support) until the MPEG-LA group of patent holders came up with a licensing plan that didn't require commercial streaming content providers to shell out what Phil viewed as unfair per-stream royalties-- a scheme which Apple apparently feels would hinder the widespread adoption of the MPEG-4 standard in a big way. Okay, sure, when set out in those terms, it's not exactly heart-pounding stuff as far as drama is concerned... but at the time there was definitely something about seeing Phil rally the troops to strike a blow against oppressive licensing fees that quickened our pulses a smidge. Maybe we just had our dramatic expectations ratcheted down to the minimum-- it was a Philnote, after all. Phil, a hothead firebrand with power to the people on his mind? The boy done us proud.

Anyway, as you've most likely heard by now, Apple has finally made a version of QuickTime 6 available to us yokels in the general public. Don't get too excited, though, because this still isn't the "real thing," per se-- it's a "Public Preview," probably less euphemistically referred to as Scary Beta Software. Apple makes a point of recommending that it "only be run for testing purposes on a non-essential system," and seeing as we don't really have any "non-essential systems" kicking around and QuickTime 5 is serving our media needs just fine right now, we'll probably opt to wait for the official QuickTime 6 release with Mac OS X 10.2 this summer. But if you're game, feel free to jump right in and "test" all the new features like MPEG-4 support, "Instant-On" streaming and skip protection, the "updated" interface, etc. Remember, if you don't like it, you can always download and reinstall QuickTime 5 and you'll be none the worse for wear. At least, that's what Apple claims, and who are we to doubt its word?

So does this release of a "Public Preview" of QuickTime 6 mean that the MPEG-4 license wars are finally over? Well, no, not quite-- at least, not according to CNET. A final license has "yet to be hammered out," but Steve thinks a resolution is just around the corner: "Every 'i' is not dotted and every 't' is not crossed, but it's getting there." Heck, Steve, if it's just a matter of dotting and crossing a couple of letters, we can take care of that for you; we got B's in Penmanship. Just fly us out and we'll even bring our own pen. Anything to help the cause.

The good news, of course, is that even if we aren't brought in with our lucky Brain Juice Pen to complete that contract with our world-renowned "i"-dotting and "t"-crossing skills, it sounds to us like all the licensing terms will be worked out in time for QuickTime 6's "real" release this summer. So relax, already. And someone tell Phil to change out of those battle fatigues and stop spouting revolutionary slogans-- he's freaking out the squares in Accounting.

We can at least be thankful for one thing about our five-week baby-raising hiatus (well, one thing aside from this cutie): at least we didn't miss any Mac OS X updates. It's one thing to have been off the air during WWDC, the public introduction of Jaguar, the unveiling of the eMac and the Xserve, and updates to Apple's whole portable line-- but the very thought that Apple could have released 10.1.5 and we might have gone a month or more without installing it frankly gives us the heebie-jeebies. It's just not natural. We would have had to buy all-new Macs or something, because the ones we own now would have been permanently altered by update starvation. And, you know, that's never a pretty sight.

Luckily, of course, Apple didn't release 10.1.5... until now. Last night we caught wind of the fact over at MacMinute and immediate stabbed at the "Update Now" button, caution be damned-- every once in a while you just have to cut loose and get reckless, you know? Well, we're happy to report that we managed to install the entire 20-something-MB update without so much as a hiccup. Unfortunately, the hiccup came after the installation. When we restarted, our dual-800 MHz Quicksilver failed to recognize and mount the CD in its SuperDrive (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2), and pressing the eject key on our keyboard just popped a charming little eject symbol onto our Cinema Display-- without actually opening the drive. One more restart with the mouse button held down to eject the disc put everything back to normal, but for a brief moment there we were panicking at the prospect of no longer being able to skate virtually as Rodney Mullen. (For those who know who he is, Rodney came out to visit and crashed at our apartment for several days a few years back, which is why we're so much cooler than you. It's all about the name-dropping.)

But we digress. If you're wondering what 10.1.5 does (apart from making SuperDrives temporarily inert, apparently), MacFixIt has the full list of changes. Most of it is the usual improved support for still more digital cameras and CD burners and bug fixes for Mail and Sherlock-- and welcome though those improvements may be, for our money, there are two things about 10.1.5 that really make it stand out. The first is vastly improved iDisk performance-- that puppy's finally actually usable without frequent bathroom breaks during file navigation. And the second is "support for 2D and QuickTime acceleration for Rage Pro."

Whoa, Rage Pro? Sounds like Apple is indeed taking that class action lawsuit about not supporting earlier ATI chipsets pretty seriously. If you happen to own a Rage Pro-based Mac and you've been less than thrilled with Mac OS X's sluglike graphics and glacial QuickTime performance, give this update a shot-- we suspect you'll notice a marked improvement. And no, 10.1.5 doesn't add 3D hardware support for Rage Pro chipsets, nor does it add any hardware support for the slower-than-dirt Rage II chips found in the original iMac and early beige G3s... but hey, in our book, partial Rage Pro support is more than we ever expected to emerge from Apple's Mac OS X development labs. What's next, is 10.1.6 going to add support for Quadras and the LC III?