Like some kind of unstoppable force from beyond, the Update Train just keeps on chug-chug-chugging along. We knew it was coming, and now it's finally made its presence known: faithful viewer Jon Rousseau tipped us off to the arrival of Mac OS X 10.1.1 late yesterday afternoon. According to Apple, the 14.4 MB update adds support for more digital cameras and printers, improves CD/DVD burning, "enhances" some networking protocols, boosts application compatibility, and enables "hardware accelerated video mirroring" for the latest PowerBooks. Nothing earth-shattering, but what did you expect? As its numbering suggests, this is essentially a minor bug-fix upgrade, so those of you who were hoping that it included Mood Desktop™ and Thought-To-Text™ technology were just begging for disappointment.

We can't tell you first-hand whether or not 10.1.1 is any great shakes, because we haven't mustered the courage to install it yet; after the recent unpleasantness with the iTunes 2.0 installer and the altered Security Update, we decided to leave the Software Update panel alone for a day or two just in case 10.1.1 leads to RAM disabling, exploding hard disks, general bad karma, or the contraction of cutaneous anthrax. As such, we backed away from the keyboard and let the "early adopters" charge ahead and download with little regard to system safety. It's now been roughly twenty-four hours, though, and so far, reports of grievous loss of life and limb appear to be relatively scarce.

A quick check over at MacFixit reveals no serious problems, and only a few minor glitches. The biggest hurdle for many people appears to have been getting the update to install without hanging. Aside from that, the only issue with the installer is that it isn't smart enough to update Mail if the program had been moved out of the Applications folder. That's rather less heinous than, say, wiping all of one's mounted partitions clean, so we welcome the improvement. As for 10.1.1 itself, there are a few problems with icon placement wackiness and some Voodoo graphics cards and Epson printers suddenly no longer being supported, but all told, it appears that this update so far isn't responsible for a single untimely death. Kudos to Apple's quality control team for getting back on the stick!

Better still, 10.1.1 reportedly does fix a few lingering problems from 10.1: FireWire hard drives that didn't show up in 10.1 now appear to work properly after the update, PPP support is improved, mounting an iDisk no longer grinds the system to a halt for a couple of ice ages, and several "issues" with Mail appear to have been addressed. Faithful viewer Gerard Jeronowitz sums it up nicely: "No data loss and a few minor improvements. Sounds like a keeper to me." So we suppose we'll bite the bullet and fire up that installer tonight-- right after we lock two full sets of redundant backups in a fire safe thirty miles from the compound, make sure our insurance is up to date, and figure out how to wear bomb squad gear inside one of those biohazard baggy-suit get-ups.