Wow, apparently today was Update Day and no one told us; if we had known, we could have thrown a little impromptu party or something. Nothing major, mind you-- just a few friends over for nachos so we could all download and apply our updates while watching the Angel rerun together. But that's okay, it's not like we need contact with other humans or anything... we can probably go another, what, four or five hours cooped up in this compound before we start going all squirrelly and saving precious bodily fluids in meticulously-labeled jars down in the basement. So yeah, we're good.

We were, um, talking about updates, right?

Okay, well, here we go: first MacMinute announced that Apple had released something called Battery Update 1.1, which allegedly "enhances the performance of a battery to ensure that full capacity is available for a PowerBook or iBook." Unfortunately, it's not for every PowerBook or iBook; our Pismo is sadly missing from the list of supported portables (supportables?), which is a bummer because its battery capacity seems to drop by at least ten minutes with every new Mac OS X version to issue forth from down Cupertino way. But if you've got a post-clamshell iBook or a PowerBook G4, it's worth scoping out the list of affected systems to see if maybe you can score some extra juice just by firing up Software Update.

Then, of course, there's the biggie: faithful viewer Bernd Schnitker (we swear that sounds like an exotic sausage dish, but he's just this guy, you know?) was the first to let us know that Mac OS X 10.3.2 is now making the rounds via Software Update. People on dialup connections, prepare to sigh raggedly; whereas the 10.3.1 updater was teeny-tiny, this sucker weighs in at roughly 38 MB, and with good reason. According to Apple, 10.3.2 includes a ton of changes, including new versions of Mail and Address Book, improved networking code, fixes for printing and faxing issues, and a slew of other "enhancements" too esoteric to list. (Well, okay, we'll list one, just for a taste: "The Repair Permissions utility no longer reports a permissions issue with the printer.conf file." There you go. Reason to run the updater right there.)

Apparently we've reverted to our old incautious selves, because we went ahead and installed this puppy on our original 12-inch PowerBook (the one that's been panicking its kernel every other day ever since we upgraded to Panther) without waiting to hear about potential 10.3.2 "issues." Our logic basically went like this: "any update that's almost 40 MB in size has got to fix this problem." Pretty clever, huh? Well, so far we have no weirdness to report, but it's only been a couple of hours yet. And if something bad does start to happen, well, at least we'll have a ready-made plot point for tomorrow's episode...

Heads up, Nervous Nellies: it's time to get antsy! There are now only twentyish days left until next month's Macworld Expo keynote address, the one event with the greatest potential to be the most Mac-significant speech of the year-- and IDG still hasn't actually told us who's giving it yet. Oh, sure, Steve has handled the honors every year since his Amelio-booting return (well, as far as we can recall-- if there were any non-Steve January keynotes since then, we've managed to repress all memory of them), but if his participation is such a given, then how come IDG is still playing coy with that spiel about the keynote's "long-standing tradition of delivering high-powered luminaries that set the pace for the future of the Mac OS platform"? Sheesh, talk about evading the issue. We can certainly understand why skittish types are starting to worry.

But fear not, friends, because Think Secret rides to the rescue with confirmation that the speech in three weeks' time will indeed be a Stevenote, not a Philnote or a Gregnote or a GeneShalitnote. Okay, fine, this "confirmation" has absolutely zero significance from an official standpoint, but in lieu of IDG actually bothering to update its web site with a freakin' name already, we're willing to take what we can get-- and really, Think Secret tends to have a strong track record about things like this. Reportedly Apple sources assure us all that Steve "has committed to doing the address," and whatever he plans to say is important enough to justify a satellite broadcast which "has already been booked." So relax already.

Of course, it's not in your nature to relax, or else you wouldn't have worked yourself into such a tizzy about this in the first place. So now, even though you're kind of at ease about Steve making his appearance, you're a little troubled as to why, if Steve has indeed "committed to doing the keynote," neither IDG nor Apple has actually bothered to tell anybody. To be honest, we're a little wigged out over it, too, especially since Think Secret claims that Steve himself "has instructed Apple's public relations department to delay an announcement until he gives his permission." Nobody seems to have any clue why, short of one Apple source who simply says, "That's Steve. He does what he wants."

True enough-- but the question is, why does he want his participation in the keynote kept under wraps, even this late in the game? Is he hedging his bets in case a better offer comes along? Because we're going to be sorely disappointed if, at the last second, he bails to go speak at the Mid Atlantic Nurserymen Trade Show in Baltimore. We're told the man can't pass up a chance to speak publicly about shrubbery.

Gee, and here we thought that the only interesting Apple Retail openings from here on out would be the ones overseas-- you know, like the recent Ginza grand opening which had a line-up of about 80 quadrillion people before the doors opened. ("It just keeps going... and going... and going...") It's not an unreasonable conclusion to draw, since after some seventy-something store openings here in the U.S., most of the thrill of the event has long since dissipated. And we certainly haven't had any non-grand-opening retail drama the likes of the Germantown signage fiasco in donkey's years.

But sometimes new domestic stores still have a bit of drama in them, even before a lease gets signed. Take, for example, the latest buzz in Manhattan: Apple's SoHo store is a mammoth construction of glass and other shiny stuff that took years to wedge into a former post office building, and the end result is a boutique that wins architectural awards and probably employs a full-time mop guy to keep the drool from pooling on the glass steps. It's a doozy, right? A reason for Apple to be proud.

But here's where the drama comes in: apparently Apple isn't satisfied with just one. According to the New York Post, the company is in negotiations to lease the underground concourse of the GM Building-- a space almost 25% bigger than even the SoHo location and "one of the most expensive basements in the universe." Nothing's etched in stone yet, but estimates put the rent on that basement somewhere in the third-of-a-million-bucks-a-month range, so if Apple grabs it, you can be sure the company's got big, big plans. Once the lease is signed and construction is finished, the SoHo store (grand as it is) may wind up being the less-impressive of Apple's Manhattan shops-- the one you "settle for" if you happen to be in the neighborhood, poor baby.

Right now there's a viewer perched in the gaping Apple Retail vacuum of Montana choking back tears over the utter injustice of it all. Before you go doing anything crazy, buddy, we should warn you that an online petition demanding that Apple move one of its Manhattan stores to Billings probably just isn't going to fly, no matter how many signatures you get.