Okay, we've only been messing with Mac OS 8.5 for a couple of days, but so far, we dig it. The Themes support is fun, but we really wish the software had shipped with the holdover themes from Copland, as originally planned. Sherlock's cool, though not necessarily all that helpful to us-- we pretty much only ever use one Internet search engine, and we're almost always already surfing in a browser when we need to search. And only time will tell if "Find By Content" will because invaluable to us, but right now it's more of a nifty tech demo than a necessary tool. All in all, it's a likeable upgrade, but one we consider somewhere between System 7.6 and Mac OS 8.0 in terms of new and improved features provided-- and neither of those upgrades cost anywhere near $99 to owners of the immediately-prior system versions.

But we were willing to consider Mac OS 8.5 "reasonably priced" because it includes a free upgrade to QuickTime 3 Pro-- a $30 value. Then again, we have a video capture card, so editing QuickTime movies is something we want to do; for most buyers, QuickTime Pro may be little more than a way to stop that spam-like ad from popping up every day. (Yes, we know about the date trick.) Anyway, after installing the upgrade late Saturday night, we registered our purchase at Apple's web site, which, according to the included documentation, was supposed to result in our receiving email with a QuickTime Pro unlock key. We got the confirmation email-- but with no unlock key. And after cruising some web sites, we found we weren't the only ones. According to MacNN, Apple's now planning on snail-mailing those unlock codes one week after the online registration, which directly contradicts the information in the box. So much for e-commerce and instant gratification.

That's okay; we're willing to wait a week or so, we suppose. In the meantime, we'll just keep on playing with the "Soundtrack" feature. It's a blast to hear what you're doing as you're doing it-- in stereo, no less. And while the default soundset is fun, we highly recommend faithful viewer Todd Wheeler's Marathon soundset, which uses sounds from Bungie's classic games. Nothing makes us happier than hearing those terminal access sounds while clicking on and scrolling through a menu...