Still beating yourself up over blithely running the 10.2.8 update without waiting for other feckless rubes to troubleshoot it first? Yeah, so are we, but hey, everyone's got to wear the Feckless Rube Hat™ once in a while. Plus, we personally were relatively lucky, since we appear to have avoided pretty much all of the nastier known bugs-- and the weirdness and instability that crops up every so often was almost worth the giddy thrill of opening the About This Mac window and seeing a Mac OS X version number a point higher than the latest official version listed at Apple's site. Ooooo, it's like we be pirates! Arrrrr, matey!

Still, though, even to the easily amused like us, it was starting to get a little old, and we found ourselves wondering just how much longer we were going to be using a Mac without a country before Apple stepped up to the plate and fixed things. Well, for those of you in the same leaky boat, here's some good news: it's back. Faithful viewer Vaska was first to report that 10.2.8 has resurfaced in Software Update; it just showed up, so details are a little sketchy, but Think Secret had previously reported that Apple had "seeded a new build of the Mac OS X 10.2.8 update" to developers-- whereas the version currently plaguing our systems is build 6R65, the new one is reportedly 6R73. Which means it's a full eight better. That ought to be enough, right?

Interestingly enough, the operating system installed by this new updater is apparently also called 10.2.8, implying that the Mac community might wind up dealing with two completely different 10.2.8s out there-- which, frankly, we always assumed was precisely the sort of situation that version numbers were supposed to prevent in the first place. AtAT sources reveal that the new version wasn't dubbed 10.2.9 due to Apple's sensitivity to the ever-worsening global 9 shortage, and will instead be branded "10.2.8 version 2," just to keep things absolutely clear.

Think Secret provides no further details on the new seed beyond Apple's own terse statement that "this build addresses some issues found in the last seed"; we are left to assume that said "issues" include the widely-reported "where the hell is my network" issue, the "why the hell won't my iMac boot" issue, the "who the hell scrambled the video on my PowerBook" issue, the "how the hell can I get my PowerBook battery to hold more than a twenty-minute charge again" issue, and of course the ever-popular "when the hell did Apple start subcontracting quality assurance testing to Microsoft" issue. Each and every one of these is fixed in 10.2.8 v.2, report our sources, although they also provided a list of known issues with the new update:

• 10.2.8 v.2 fixes the network connectivity problems of the previous version, provided that the Mac's Ethernet port is kept within .2 degrees of alignment with the star Pherkad Minor at all times.

• 10.2.8 v.2 restores PowerBook battery capacity to previous levels, but administers a mild electric shock from time to time just to remind you who's boss, bee-yatch.

• 10.2.8 v.2 will occasionally knock over a nearby liquor store and then email expertly Photoshopped images of you pointing the gun at the clerk, thereby neatly framing you for armed robbery.

Not to worry: a "10.2.8 v.2 variant B" is already in the works to fix the above problems. Reportedly it will only frame you for public drunkenness, which is generally only a misdemeanor and therefore carries no jail time. Progress!

(And yes, we're waiting a little while before installing this one. Our Feckless Rube Hat™'s at the cleaners.)

Man, aside from the last-minute 10.2.8 release, talk about a nothing news day! It's times like this that we regret that Apple isn't designing and producing Macs in a post-apocalyptic netherworld in which life is cheaper than dirt and blood flows in mighty rivers amid the epic and murderous struggle for the control of the world's rapidly-dwindling fresh water supply. (Or something.) Instead, all's quiet on the Apple front, and it looks like the Mac-centric 'net is closing out the week with a strict diet of fluff and filler; that may be fine for most folks, but AtAT's viewing audience needs a good deal more drama than can be squeezed out of shareware release announcements and product reviews. Unfortunately, just about the only thing we can offer up in that vein is a collection of regretful comments made by a former Apple CEO-- and it's not even Gil Amelio. Sad, isn't it? So we figure we'll just cut our losses and pad it out as a thinly-veiled vehicle for shameless AtAT Store advertising; consider it an infomercial that's a lot less info and a lot more mercial.

Not that the story is totally devoid of spark, mind you; the ex-CEO in question is none other than John Sculley, the askee of the infamous "sugared water" question and the intended target of Jobs's failed coup-- a coup which blew up in Jobs's face and led to his own departure from Apple. Exciting stuff, right? Unfortunately, when interviewing the man, CNET thought it'd be a lot more fun never to mention the Steve Jobs intrigue at all and instead get Sculley to yammer on about radiofrequency identification and 802.11 for six hours straight. Of course, if the guy really had his finger on the pulse of innovation today, he'd have been talking about the Amazing AtAT Karmic InvisiShirt™ instead-- the world's first nonexistent garment that still costs real money! A breakthrough!

Now that Big John is long gone from Apple and running out the clock as an "investment partner with venture firm Sculley Brothers" (hey, didn't we used to buy skateboards from them?), he's gained some perspective on his missed opportunities at Apple. The big one? HyperCard, Apple's nearly-two-decades-old databasey programming hyperlinky thing for the masses which is still sold today. Sculley's regret is not having recognized at the time that HyperCard had all the elements necessary-- hyperlinking, simple prototyping, network hooks, etc.-- to evolve into the basis for a massively-interlinked decentralized collection of globally-networked information. Instead, Tim Berners-Lee invented HTTP and HTML a few years later... using Steve Jobs's NeXT hardware and software. Just imagine: if only Sculley had worn more creativity-enhancing Jobsian attire (like, say, the über-stylish AtAT mock turtleneck-- just in time for fall, only $20 with free shipping in the U.S. and Canada!), Apple might have invented the World-Wide Web. D'oh!!

And what about everyone's favorite prototypical handheld? Sculley says that he "can look back at something like Newton" and feel that it "could have been one of Apple's most profitable investments ever"-- except, of course, the handwriting recognition "ended up being a pretty big embarrassment because it just didn't work." Poor John; all these years later and he still doesn't realize that the real reason the Newton didn't sell was because it didn't have a spiffy AtAT sticker on it! Yes, the AtAT sticker: making even technically embarrassing products 80% more saleable since 2001! Now with free shipping and a new lower price!

Oh, and we've got t-shirts, too.

And hey, what better way to head into the weekend than with the warm fuzzy feeling only the possibility of a class action suit against Microsoft with potentially "millions of plaintiffs" can provide? Don't get us wrong-- we're as opposed to the proliferation of frivolous litigation as anyone, but it's a proven scientific fact that the amount of litigation in process at any given time is a universal constant, so aiming a few million plaintiffs at Redmond means that the rest of the planet-- Apple included-- can take a little break from getting sued for a change.

Besides, who says this lawsuit is frivolous? Reuters reports that the suit merely attempts to hold Microsoft economically liable for the smoldering crater that used to be civilization before rampaging viruses smacked the technological bejeezus out of it. Microsoft, for its part, takes the view that "this complaint misses the point. The problems caused by viruses are the result of criminal acts by people who write viruses." Well, duh. But speaking of missing the point, guys, that doesn't mean you can't be held responsible for shipping products so full of holes they could double as the plot for the next Charlie's Angels sequel. Especially since the only way you manage to sell a product so ridiculously flawed in the first place is because of that little "monopoly" thing.

And quit it with the innocent looks and the "what monopoly?" face-- it was proven in court and upheld on appeal, remember? Seriously, if there were another operating system on the market that ran on the same hardware and ran the same applications at the same speed but didn't require more patches per day than a carton-a-week smoker going cold turkey, do you honestly think it wouldn't be beating the pants off you at the cash register?

Wait, when did this turn into a tirade with us ranting directly at Microsoft?

Paragraph 2? Wow. Okay, well, we're done with that, then.

Anyway, it's not soup yet, but if and when the suit gets approved as a class action, feel free to climb on board if you qualify as a plaintiff, if for no other reason than to be able to tell your grandkids that you sued Microsoft back in Ought-Three. Hmmmm, does our ownership of an old, dusty copy of Virtual PC with Windows 95 make us eligible, or do we actually have to have been infected with a worm or virus to participate? If it's the latter, that seems woefully unfair; anyone who's ever had to use Windows for more than eight minutes straight should at least be able to score a few hundred grand for pain, suffering, and exposure to toxic waste. Fingers crossed!