Pardon us while we roll our eyes, but with Mac OS X so close to completion, we thought we'd seen the end of the Name Game. You know what we're talking about: the way that Apple avoids missing its deadlines by constantly moving the finish line. Apple bought NeXT almost four years ago. Originally the NeXT-based Mac operating system was dubbed "Rhapsody" and a schedule was announced-- it was so long ago, we don't fully trust our memories, but we're pretty sure it was a fairly standard "alpha, beta, release" sort of plan. Then the versions of Rhapsody got shuffled; Developer Release 1, Developer Release 2, Public Release 1, etc., and the release dates shifted with the name changes. Then in 1998, suddenly Rhapsody turned into Mac OS X, with more features and a new API, and the release date moved again. And most recently, Apple didn't "miss" the 1.0 release of Mac OS X this past summer, because as Steve Jobs told us all, the public beta we got instead was pretty much just a new name for what would otherwise have been the original 1.0 release.

Now, with Mac OS X finally rumored to surface at the end of February, we figured we'd seen an end to those types of shenanigans, but Mac OS Rumors hints that the game may not be over yet. "At least some form of new Mac OS X release" is apparently now in the cards for next month's Macworld Expo. It may be a new public beta version, which jibes with what RAILhead Design recently claimed (though the Naked Mole Rat disagrees). However, according to MOSR's sources, Apple may be feeling tremendous pressure to get Mac OS X out the door in order to satisfy some of the pent-up demand among people who have been putting off their Mac purchases until Apple's new operating system is released. Reportedly the company is desperate enough to fire up Mac sales that it might actually repackage the Public Beta 2.0 as something like "Mac OS X Power User Release" (it's not done, but it's not a beta; buy it now!)-- or even the holy grail itself, "Mac OS X 1.0."

Needless to say, if we do get Mac OS X 1.0 in January, it won't be as complete as the version planned for a later ship date-- but drivers, shmivers, right? And this wouldn't be the first time that Apple pulled something like this; Mac OS 8 may have been a nice upgrade, but it definitely wasn't the Mac OS 8 (originally Copland) we'd formerly been promised. In any event, it'll be interesting to see just how desperate Apple has become when Steve takes the stage in three weeks. We'll be able to tell a lot about the ulcer rate at One Infinite Loop by what the iCEO tries to sell us.