Still reeling in psychic pain from the anticipation of the soul-crushing inconvenience you'll suffer by not being able to play DVD movies after upgrading to Mac OS X 1.0 in a few weeks? Well, buckle in, Sparky, because your imminent inability to watch Scooby Doo on Zombie Island on your PowerBook may just turn out to be the icing on the Cake of Doom-- at least, that's the decidedly pessimistic view put forth by CNET. Apparently even at this late date, there are several "glitches" remaining in late beta builds of Apple's next-generation operating system, and they range in seriousness from "annoying" to "frustrating."

In addition to the lack of DVD playback software and native versions of iTunes and iMovie, the initial "Cheetah" release of Mac OS X reportedly includes unspecified "sleep problems with Mac laptops," a lack of hardware acceleration support for the ATI RADEON or upcoming nVIDIA GeForce3 graphics chipsets, "a variety of bugs" that can crash the uncrashable OS, performance bottlenecks in certain Classic applications, and a host of other niggling little issues. Those problems have teamed with the initial dearth of Mac OS X-native applications to prompt Apple to shoot for a stealth rollout; if you were expecting a massive marketing push for Mac OS X's release, stop holding your breath, because it's not going to happen. The "Cheetah" release is purely for early adopters willing to deal with the lack of apps and the warts present in a 1.0 OS release; rather than advertising it, Steve says that Apple's going to "let them grab it out of our hands."

In other words, Apple doesn't feel that Mac OS X 1.0 is done enough to target at average users-- which means, of course, that in a way, the Public Beta was a Public Alpha (heck, it wasn't even close to being feature-complete) and the upcoming "Cheetah" release is a Public Beta. But most of us knew that already. Mac OS X probably won't really feel "finished" until the first update ships this summer; "Puma," as it's been dubbed, will allegedly restore missing features such as DVD playback, and it'll also fix a host of bugs in the "Cheetah" release that Apple can't squash in time to meet the March 24th ship date.

So will we cancel our pre-order for Mac OS X's debut release? Not on your life, chum. This is history in the making, and we're getting in on the ground floor. We appreciate the ridiculous amount of work that Apple's sinking into this effort (they're writing an operating system, fer cryin' out Pete's sake! That is so cool!), and we recognize that there are going to be flaws at the start. If you're willing to be realistic about what Mac OS X 1.0 can offer, join us; if you're the less impetuous type, maybe waiting for "Puma" this summer would be a wiser course of action. Make your own choice, but make an informed one. But color us "Cheetah"!