We're going to propose something slightly drastic, here: if Apple really expects us all to buy Mac hardware that's new enough and pumped-up enough to run Mac OS X as per the listed system requirements, the least the company could do is ship an operating system that doesn't cause our Macs to burst into flame. Who's with us on this? Show of hands?

Okay, so some of you are slowly raising your hands, drawing the unwanted attention of your employers as you slack off on their dime, idly wondering why we're suggesting something that should pretty much go without saying. It's like this: faithful viewer David Triska tipped us off to a new AppleInsider story about Apple's most recent frenzied progress in its race to get Mac OS X firmed up enough to meet Uncle Steve's March 24th do-or-die ship date. Generally speaking, its a fun romp through a whirlwind of internal beta builds that show steadily improving speed and stability-- and even a feature set that continues to expand at this late stage of the development process. But one detail really stuck in our collective craw: "Friday's build of the OS (4K46) was said to have fried one of the company's 533 MHz multiprocessor Power Mac G4 test machines."

Now, we're not entirely sure what AppleInsider means by "fried," but the connotations of the word (at least outside of a dining context) aren't exactly pretty. The best-case interpretation is that a bug in that beta build caused some form of hardware damage to, say, the memory controller on the Mac's logic board. The worst-case version involves a full-on Power Mac Flambé, which in turn triggered a halon release, the near deaths of two testing engineers, and a general state of higgledy-piggledy.

In any event, though, we have to assume that Apple leapt on that bug post-haste and stomped it into oblivion; reportedly beta builds 4K47 and 4K48 were both distributed internally just one day later, presumably in hopes of preventing further insurance rate hikes caused by additional fire- and/or halon-related injuries or deaths. Still, just hearing that an operating system could damage hardware gives us pause. We'd heard of Wintel-centric viruses that could indeed cause permanent physical harm to some systems, but we certainly never expected to have to worry about our own operating system "frying" our Macs. Suddenly kernel panics sound like a walk in the park. As the omnipresent Mr. Triska noted, "Power To Burn," indeed...