Are you one of those persistent never-say-die types who just keeps trying until success is achieved? Because we sure aren't. After a few half-hearted and unsuccessful attempts to download all fifteen parts of the Mac OS 9.1 update (a single-file version will be "available soon," thank heavens), we figured we'd just wait a week or two until the mad rush died down. After all, it's not like the update really adds all that many noticeable features-- as several of the foolhardy gotta-get-it-now crowd discovered firsthand. After spending hours upon hours trying to beat the others to the files, some poor guy emerged from the melee, bloody and broken, but victorious and in possession of the full 70+ MB installation package. He installed the update while tending to his grievous wounds, and for his trouble, he received... a "Window" menu in the Finder and the ability to press Command-Shift-Delete to empty the Trash. Oooooo. These are the spoils of war?

Okay, that's an oversimplification; there are lots of under-the-hood changes and improvements. But given how long Mac OS 9.1 has been in development, somehow we expected some more visible augmentations. No wonder Steve didn't mention it during his keynote-- as far as operating system updates go, it lacks panache, especially since the rumor mill had raised some people's expectations about what would be included. Remember the buzz about InkWell, Apple's port of the ill-fated Newton's handwriting recognition engine to the Mac OS? As faithful viewer PJ Taylor reminded us, that was supposedly going to ship in 9.1 and wound up getting left out entirely. In fact, according to a ZDNet article, quite a few new technologies planned for this quiet little update appear to have wound up on the cutting room floor.

In addition to InkWell, which is now reportedly being reserved as a Mac OS X-only feature, Open Transport 3.0 seems to have gotten the axe. There was also originally going to be a nifty feature to make it easier to download photos from digital cameras; you know, more of that whole "hub of your digital lifestyle" hoo-ha. We were hoping for something as easy and intuitive as Apple's QuickTake digital camera software, which mounted the camera on the Desktop just like a disk; opening it revealed all the photos as individual files, complete with thumbnails for icons and ready to drag wherever we wanted them. Ah, well... maybe in Mac OS X.

That's a lot of planned functionality that got trimmed for the final (late) Mac OS 9.1 release. It sounds to us like Apple kept poaching Mac OS 9.1 engineers to work twenty-six hour days on Mac OS X, until Mac OS 9.1 itself was being coded by a solitary janitor and two of the cafeteria staff during off-hours. (And they did a commendable job!) But the important thing is that it's done, it's (sort of) available, and we're going to download it and install just as soon as we run out of more crucial things to do. Whoops, gotta refill those ice trays!