Sure, everybody loves Panther, but the only people who don't acknowledge that it has "issues" are also insisting that the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney is stored in the catacombs beneath Disney World. (Rational people know full well that the Waltsicle was relocated to Disney's California Adventure earlier this year.) Heck, in addition to an exciting cornucopia of lesser problems and incompatibilities, Mac OS X 10.3 packs a couple of crowd-pleasers so freaky that Apple had to address them publicly-- namely, the FireWire data loss "situation" (it's allegedly not Apple's fault, so it's not a "bug") and the FileVault "Preferences 'n' More" Corruption issue.

But if reports of crazy data loss have kept you from installing Panther on your beloved Mac for fear of losing a limb in the ensuing mayhem, wait no more: faithful viewer Adam J. Bezark informed us of Mac OS X 10.3.1's existence within minutes of its spontaneous appearance on Apple's Software Update servers, and it allegedly fixes both the FireWire problem and the FileVault issue (although Apple still insists that owners of FireWire 800 drives contact the drive manufacturers for firmware updates "even with the improvements in this update"). It also "delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability" for printing and WebDAV, and incorporates the recent Security Updates. Not bad for a 1.5 MB download.

By the way, at broadcast time, Apple's 10.3.1 info page was still claiming that the download required, paradoxically enough, Mac OS X 10.3.1. We have been assured that this is merely a typo and not evidence of a looming collapse of the space-time continuum.

Sadly, there's no mention of a fix in 10.3.1 for the kernel panics we've been experiencing on a 12-inch PowerBook ever since the Panther install. The count is up to seven or eight now, averaging about one every other day, all of them occurring upon waking from sleep, except one that occurred upon sleeping from wake. Still, we leapt right in and installed 10.3.1 anyway, without even waiting to see if it was one of those evil updaters that makes things worse-- because we figured, hey, what could possibly be worse than a kernel panic every other day?

Which is kind of a stupid thing to think, of course, since there's all sorts of fates worse than that. A railroad spike through the head, for one. Also, being forced to sit through Cop & 1/2. There are a few others, too, we're pretty sure.

Luckily, though, so far the scattered reports of 10.3.1 weirdness seem relatively minor and mostly fixable with simple driver updates: missing USB devices, continuing FireWire woes, slow restarts, that sort of thing. And for what it's worth, we haven't had another kernel panic yet-- although it's only been a day. We'll let you know if it happens again. Heck, you'll probably hear the screams.

Erratum time! We don't often make mistakes here at AtAT (well, actually, we make scads of 'em, all the time-- so in fact, we suppose there's even one preceding this parenthetical), but when we do, we try to put things right, as long as there's nothing good on TV. That is our commitment to quality. Well, yesterday we noted that Scotland had banned Apple's G5 commercial because of the ad's claim that the Power Mac G5 is "the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer." (We can get away with playing fast and loose with unprovable superlatives here in the U.S., but evidently consumers and marketers in certain other parts of the world have yet to arrive at a mutual understanding that all advertising is fraud.) It turns out that we were wrong.

While the ad is banned in Scotland, Scotland didn't do the banning: faithful viewer jc was the first of several to point out that the Independent Television Commission is not a Scottish organization, and is actually based in London. (Contrary to widespread U.S. belief, London is not in Scotland, nor is Scotland a suburb of Cleveland. You could have knocked us over with a feather.) Unfortunately for Apple, the ITC's arms are also somewhat longer than the length and breadth of Scotland alone, and so the Miserable Pack of Lies™ that is the G5 commercial is therefore banned from being broadcast anywhere in the entire United Kingdom.

That makes the whole scenario just a wee bit stranger. Longtime viewers will recall that it took Apple half a decade or so to get over a peevish bout of flagrant anti-UK policy, the cause of which remains buried in the mists of time, but during which Apple routinely cancelled UK trade show appearances, eliminated the British-localized Mac OS, and laid off British personnel in suspicious quantities. Why the UK would risk a return of said behavior by banning Apple's only Power Mac commercial from its airwaves is beyond us; we can only assume that the ITC knew not what sort of retaliation it might be inviting when it instituted the ban. Rest assured that the Wrath of Steve shall be subtle but terrible.

Or maybe not. Since the objectionable portion of the G5 ad is just Jeff Goldblum's voiceover, it's a simple (and cheap) matter for Apple to record a new one that's less offensively boastful, thereby rendering the existing ad UK-friendly without having to produce an entirely new spot, so maybe Steve will choose to show mercy. For the UK voiceover, in place of the problematic phrase "world's fastest, most powerful personal computer," may we suggest something less likely to be challenged? Perhaps something along the lines of "world's aluminumest, most perforated personal computer." Catchy!

Sometimes things just work out fine in the end, you know? For instance, today we discovered that we had forgotten to buy more breakfast cereal and were consequently all out of Irony-Os ("The Breakfast of Wise-Asses"), and, well, without our 100% USRDA of elemental irony each morning, we're even more useless than normal. Totally incoherent, as opposed to partially incoherent. Brains that register the same amount of biochemical activity as a bowl of cooling split pea soup. Irony deficiency is a brutal condition around these parts, and the last time it struck we had to hire ourselves out as low-rent speed bumps and door stops until one of us could get to the cereal aisle of a grocery store. You need coffee, we need irony. It's just that simple.

So there we were, resigning ourselves to our fate and wondering idly about how to get tire tread stains out of cotton when faithful viewer Richard Plotkin sent us a link to an article in Techworld.com. We mustered every last remaining iota of brain power at our disposal and read the headline: "Microsoft prepares security assault on Linux: Company will criticize Linux for taking too long to fix bugs."

And suddenly we were fine.

Yes, that's right, folks; spooked by Linux's increasing success in the enterprise space, Microsoft is now just flailing wildly in its desperate attempt to persuade big business to stick with Redmondware. Its upcoming initiative is called "Days of Risk" (Tom Cruise is in talks to star in the miniseries version) and it intends to "undermine critics and place a question mark over Linux's security by revealing that, on average, Windows poses less of a security risk."

Because, you know, there were all those Linux systems that got nailed to the floor by Blaster and SoBig. (Wow, we haven't had this much irony at once in years! We feel great!)

Now, we're not saying that Linux is perfect or that it doesn't have security problems, but just about everybody who uses a computer on a network (plus everyone else who happens to watch the news) knows all about how Microsoft left big honkin' holes in its products and cost the planet billions of dollars in lost productivity. Frankly, we don't care if Linux leaks like a colander with bladder control issues; Microsoft launching a major PR campaign to tell the world that its products are more secure "on average" than anything is just too precious for words. After all, when was the last time Red Hat had to put a price on virus-writers' heads?

We may never have to buy cereal again!