Bemoaning the lack of drama surrounding Apple of late? That's because things are eerily quiet pending the release of Mac OS X in four days' time-- and because the drama is all taking place at Wincent.org. Wincent, as many of you know, has been "obtaining" developmental builds of Mac OS X for some time now, and has attracted the unwelcome attention of Apple's lawyers on numerous occasions by posting reviews and screenshots of Apple's unreleased product. That hasn't stopped him from following Mac OS X through to completion, though, and his site is clearly the hub of Apple drama lately. The latest question on every Mac geek's mind: "Is Mac OS X 10.0 the same as internal build 4K78, or not?"

If you haven't been ravenously consuming every last leaked detail about Apple's upcoming operating system, that question probably means nothing to you, but some people are foaming at the mouth over this issue. Wincent claims to have two sets of the actual, honest-to-goodness CD-ROMs that will ship in the Mac OS X retail box (there are photos, if you're interested), and that the final released version of Mac OS X is "byte for byte" identical to the 4K78 build he reviewed in depth some time ago. The wailing and gnashing of teeth among the unbelievers stems from the fact that, while impressive, 4K78 was not widely held to be a release-quality chunk of code; Wincent himself originally described it as "not Golden Master, but certainly a stunning candidate." In other words, good as an internal build-- but not necessarily good enough for Apple to throw in a box and ship as a finished product.

Dig through the forums if you want a better sense of why some people are upset, but generally it boils down to this: while 4K78 was reportedly a major step forward in Mac OS X's development, it still contains performance issues and a slew of irritating and potentially harmful bugs. Builds at least as high as 4K88 have been spotted, so lots of people are wondering why Apple chose to release a much earlier version. So is Mac OS X just build 4K78? Some say yes, some say no-- and we say we won't know for sure until our copy arrives on Saturday, we install it, and check the "About" box. But whatever Mac OS X 10.0 turns out to be, we're committed to leaping into the deep end and seeing how well we float.