Good things come to those who wait. And wait. And wait some more. Heck, sometimes it seems like we've been waiting for Mac OS X Server (the operating system formerly known as Rhapsody) forever. Not that we at AtAT are in any particular hurry to buy the OS ourselves; it is, after all, going to cost $1000, and it's not even guaranteed to run on our two-year-old hardware. Partly we're anxious because we think it's high time Apple finally released an OS that can really be used in a heavy-duty server environment, but mostly we want to see it come out just because we've been waiting for well over two years now for a brand-new operating system following Apple's purchase of NeXT. Waiting has become habit, even though what we're waiting for isn't something that we ourselves can particularly use.

The last few months, in particular, have been maddening, since it's always seemed that the release of Mac OS X Server has been just around the corner. It was over a month ago that Mac OS Rumors reported that Mac OS X Server had gone "golden master," meaning it was done, complete, finished, in the can, and sent off for duplication. Evidently that wasn't the case. Now, according to MacNN, Apple Insider sources are saying that the fabled server OS has indeed finally reached GM status. Really. This time for sure. Crazy optimists that we are, we believe them.

But not just on faith, mind you. Some nice beta tester apparently felt that his or her loyalty to AtAT outweighed any possible consequences of violating an Apple non-disclosure agreement, and let us spend a couple of hours sitting down at a G3 running a very late build of X Server. It is, to put it mildly, damn cool. Don't expect anything even close to being as elegant or easy to use as the Mac OS, but it's definitely the easiest Unix we've ever had the honor to play with. What was particularly creepy was booting the system's normal, everyday Mac OS 8.5.1 system disk in the Blue Box and having just about everything work. At full speed. As in, Myth played just fine. We didn't have the time to put the thing through any serious tests, but Apple Insider's sneak peek is very accurate, as far as we could tell. Memo to Apple: it's done. Ship it. And then slap on a Finder, make the Blue Box transparent, smooth out the rough edges, and give us all the full-fledged Mac OS X, which (if these early indications mean anything) will conquer the world.