Ever since last summer, Apple's been trying hard to get the Mac-using world excited about the Mac OS again; and that's a great idea, since the Mac OS is what most Mac users will continue to use for years to come. Many of us, however, are still anxiously awaiting the day when we can install and use Rhapsody, despite Apple's attempt to downplay its importance on client machines. Yes, the Mac OS is awesome, and it keeps getting better; System 7.6 was the first in a series of very solid, fast, timely, dependable upgrades that recently continued with Mac OS 8.1, and will continue into the future with the nifty features slotted for Allegro. But Rhapsody is the future, and as such, it's only natural that we be interested in this operating system initially targeted at servers and high-end power users.

And that's why we were so happy to read the initial reactions of a Mac OS Rumors source who had a chance to test-drive Rhapsody DR2, the second developer release which just went "golden master" and will be shipped to Apple developers soon. In addition to improvements to the interface and network performance over DR1, a version of QuickTime is included in DR2, which runs QuickTime movies unhaltingly while other computationally-intensive tasks are running in the foreground. And on top of that feeling of speed provided by pre-emptive multitasking, DR2 is over twice as fast as DR1 when run side by side.

One fact that wasn't listed was how the Blue Box compatibility environment performs in DR2. Early reports of the first Blue Box, delivered after DR1, indicated excellent compatibility and decent performance. If DR2 is truly twice as fast as DR1, it seems very possible that running Mac OS applications in the Blue Box in Rhapsody DR2 may actually be much, much faster than running the same software in the actual Mac OS on the same machine. If Apple pulls off that little feat, the long-term transition from Mac OS to Rhapsody may not be so long-term after all.

It's been a couple of weeks since the last episode of Redmond Justice, but truth be told, the set's been pretty quiet recently. Today we saw a small blip on the radar, though, as the Department of Justice subpoenaed several internet service providers, including bigwigs AOL and MCI, in its ongoing investigation of possible antitrust practices by Microsoft in its positioning of Internet Explorer. An Associated Press story has a few more details.

According to a Justice Department official, the ISP's are being dragged in to determine if they made deals with Microsoft to make it easier for ISP customers to use Internet Explorer instead of Netscape Navigator, or any other web browser. This strikes us as somewhat significant, as it represents an apparent widening of the case's scope; while the current Redmond Justice case centers around whether or not Microsoft was violating its consent agreement by forcing the bundling of IE with all Windows 95 systems, the DoJ now appears to be preparing a new case against the software company, targeting other ways in which it may have competed unfairly to monopolize the browser market.

Which, of course, paves the way for Redmond Justice II: The Wrath of Reno, coming soon to a TV set near you. And if the Justice Department's as serious about nailing Microsoft as they appear to be, we'll see sequels and spin-offs for years to come.

Despite the fact that it's not going to surface for another three months or so, people in the know are getting all worked up about Apple's new high-end Powerbook, code-named Wall Street. When we saw that Mac the Knife's intern Brett was reporting that Wall Street would have a colored plastic case (similar in concept to the eMate), we headed over to O'Grady's PowerPage for the latest scoop on this intriguing new portable. What we found there, frankly, staggered us. (For the most complete coverage of All Things Powerbook, we can't recommend O'Grady's PowerPage highly enough.)

According to the PowerPage, not only will the case be made of two different materials (which lends credence to the "colored case" rumor), but Wall Street's list of specifications make it sound like something out of Star Trek. What other laptop, made by Apple or any other entity, has SVHS video-out capability? Or 4 MB of VRAM, to generate 24-bit color on a 1024x768 screen? Or a processor-upgradeable CPU daughtercard? Powerbook lovers also finally get two memory expansion slots instead of just one, and a feature we haven't seen since the ill-fated iMediaEngine: a removable keyboard. You want speed? Wall Street's top-of-the-line 292 MHz version benchmarks at twice the speed of the current Powerbook G3, presumably due primarily to its 83 MHz bus speed and improvements to its memory subsystems.

It's nice to hear that Apple's not content with just having the world's fastest laptop-- it's really going for the throat on this one. We haven't heard any rumors about why this super-cool new Powerbook's been code-named Wall Street, though; any ideas? Perhaps you have to be a Wall Street tycoon to afford one? ;-)