It's old news to those of you who forgo sleep for vigilance and compulsively stab at the "Check Now" button in Software Update every twelve seconds until your clicking fingers bleed (and hey, who doesn't?), but just in case you haven't noticed, Mac OS X 10.3.6 is available for download as of last Friday-- and weighing in at 92 MB for the combo updater, it's a big 'un. Of course, you would have expected that had you also compulsively followed the constant rumor reports on every little build update during 10.3.6's ongoing development; the odds are decent that you at least caught the latest ones, because heaven knows there wasn't much else to follow last week.

So is the drama drought over? Let's just say that the answer is an unqualified "sort of." Because even though 10.3.6 brings a raft of changes across the board (including "enhancements" to third party app compatibility, external device support, networking, file sharing, user logins, printing, font management, disc burning, iPod connections, graphics support, FileVault, PoleVault, Bluetooth, RedTooth, and SnaggleTooth), none of them is very exciting-- none of the intended changes, at least. See, faithful viewer Phillip De Vita was the first of several faithful viewers who informed us that they installed 10.3.6, it works great, it feels snappier, and oh by the way it ATE THEIR FREAKIN' HARD DRIVES.

Not all hard drives, mind you; just external FireWire ones, and not even all of those. But MacFixIt confirms that the problem is more widespread than anyone would like-- at least, anyone who doesn't trade in human misery like we do-- and reports that symptoms range from drives not mounting to drives not booting to drives flat-out losing some or all of their data. Sound familiar? It should, because previous Mac OS X updates have also introduced certain "irregularities" in how FireWire drives have been handled, but this one sounds more prevalent and potentially nastier than the issues that cropped up in 10.3.5, 10.3.4, and 10.3.3. Indeed, this one sounds a lot more like last year's Halloween data loss bugaboo lurking within the original Panther release, which Apple blamed on a bug in "external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02."

But if this is a bout of déjà vu, it's one of the déjà-vuiest we've ever experienced. Check out the "important note" that Apple has tacked onto the bottom of the 10.3.6 download page: "Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Even with the improvements available in this update, Apple recommends you update the firmware on your FireWire drive. Please contact your drive manufacturer for more information." What the--?

Oh, wait... that warning is on the 10.3.5 download page, too, so for all we know it's been slapped onto every Panther update for a year and we just tuned it out because we got sick of seeing it. Well, somehow we doubt that everyone suffering from missing/unbootable/toasted FireWire drives since installing 10.3.6 has had the "evil firmware" all this time without noticing, so we have a feeling that Apple may soon be blaming a firmware version other than 1.02. In any case, 10.3.6 clearly introduces some sort of FireWire weirdness, so personally we're going to stay well away until Apple issues an update to the update. Paranoia pays off again!

Okay, folks, there's another newcomer looking to challenge the market dominance of the iTunes Music Store, so let's get a show of hands. Which seems weirder to you, conceptually speaking: Coca-Cola's music download store, or Tesco's equivalent venture?

Wow. Barely any response, and what few hands we do see are all clustered on an island slightly smaller than Oregon over there on the other side of the Atlantic. Okay, well, for the rest of you with the blank stares, we should explain: first of all, Coke does indeed have its own music download store called MyCokeMusic.com, but it's only active in the United Kingdom. (You would have picked up on that if you'd paid more attention around here.) As for Tesco, it's a gi-normous supermarket chain over there in the UK who has evidently felt dead inside ever since it failed in its three-year bid to change the name of a traditional English dessert from "Spotted Dick" to "Spotted Richard," so it's decided to jump on the music download bandwagon in hopes of bolstering morale.

So now that we're all on the same page, let's try this again. Which strikes you as more bizarre: MyCokeMusic.com, or the newly-launched iTesco Music Store? We're pretty torn, ourselves. While, in a strictly categorical business sense, fizzy beverages seem totally unrelated to electronic music distribution, Coke peddles its various fluids by aggressively marketing them to the cool kids; MyCokeMusic.com is obviously just another way to keep its brand visible to those hip 'n' wacky teens with their disposable income and resistance to insulin shock. We're guessing that choice of beverage has a lot more to do with brand loyalty than taste, so realistically speaking, anything Coke can do to promote its brand among its target demographics is a solid business move, even if it seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with brown sugary stuff in bottles. (Who remembers Coke clothing? Ah, the eighties...)

Now, being on the wrong side of the ocean to collect much relevant data, we're just going to have to assume that, like pretty much every other supermarket on the planet, Tesco isn't really making a major push to become the place where all the hip teens do all their grocery shopping. Looking at it that way, Coke's foray into music downloads might make more sense. But leaving aside marketing and demographics for a moment, at least supermarkets sell lots of different items, and it's not even limited to food; granted, there's a bit of a leap from batteries and greeting cards to digital music downloads, but Tesco's never been afraid to stretch the whole "supermarket" thing a bit. Longtime viewers might recall that we once informed you that Tesco sold iMacs. Heck, it even sells insurance, for crying out loud; if you're going to go that far afield, why not serve up some Missy Elliott tunes at the same time?

Of course, from an Apple perspective this is all largely moot, since we can't see Tesco stealing customers from the iTMS in the UK any more than Wal-Mart steals iTMS customers over here-- less, even, since Wal-Mart at least beats Apple on price, while Tesco only price-matches Apple. If anything, it's other UK iTMS competitors like MyCokeMusic and Napster who'll lose revenue to Tesco, since they charge more per song than Tesco's 79 pence. And then there's the real reason Apple needn't worry just yet: Tesco's store is-- surprise, surprise-- Windows Media-based, meaning that it won't work on Macs and (more to the point) it won't work with iPods. Considering that the UK is clearly one of the absolutely iPod-craziest spots on earth, well, anyone want to bet just how much Apple's UK market share wavers? Tesco may well discover that it would have been far better off trying to rename another dessert.

Uh-oh, looks like those pesky Internet pirates just laid a big ol' "arrrrr MATEY" upside U2's collective head. Faithful viewer Aimon Larkin noted that the band's new album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is all over the P2P networks like a rash on anyone who sees Steve Ballmer naked-- and it's not slated for release for another couple of weeks, yet. It's one thing for fans to buy the album legitimately when given the choice, but since the only way to hear the music right now is to swipe it, we imagine the temptation is huge. And you know as well as we do just how many of those "I swear I'll buy the real album as soon as it comes out" promises will go unfulfilled because, hey, what's the rush?

So now we suppose it's put up or shut up time for U2, because they had a contingency plan for just this situation that some people considered a bit radical when it was first proposed. You may recall that the prospect of an Internet leak was big on the band's mind last July when someone stole a prerelease cut of the album during a photo shoot in France; as the Daily Telegraph reported at the time, Bono had said that if the album showed up online before its official release date, U2 would "release it immediately as a legal download on iTunes" in hopes that, given the choice between stealing the album via BitTorrent or buying it legitimately via the iTunes Music Store, the band's fans would choose the latter.

Granted, Bono was talking about what the band would do if the album had been leaked in July, four months in advance of its planned release; now that the real thing is slated to hit store shelves (both physical and virtual) in just two more weeks, there may be less incentive to rush out an iTMS release. Still, is there any particular reason not to post the album for sale on the iTMS two weeks early? The only potential downside we can see is that it might reduce the sales of CDs when the plastic version ships because early adopters will have already spent ten clams to download the album in order to hear it early. From a money perspective it wouldn't much matter, because the band probably makes as much from an iTMS download as it does from a CD purchase, but fewer CD sales means a potentially lower ranking in the charts.

At this point we'll just wait and see; as of broadcast time, the iTunes Music Store still wasn't showing the album for sale-- but Suprnova.org listed over a thousand BitTorrent seeds for it. If U2 does decide to release the album early via the iTMS, that'll be a nice coup for Apple, since apparently there are lots of U2 fans into the whole iPod/iTunes thing, at least if Amazon sales are any indication; faithful viewer Bill Palmer points out at iPodGarage that the iPod U2 Special Edition is the number one Early Adopter product in Computers (followed closely, incidentally, by the 40 GB iPod Photo and the 60 GB iPod Photo). So how 'bout it, Bono 'n' Pals?