Wouldn't you know it? Less than half an hour after we broadcast a scene yesterday about how Mac OS X 10.1.2 wasn't out yet, faithful viewer Michael Dunne wrote in to let us know that it had suddenly shown up in Software Update. Evidently the universe enjoys making us look bad-- which is perfectly fine with us, provided we get the goods to distract us from our hurt feelings. Unfortunately, when the cosmos smacks us down for saying something's not out yet, it's always just little stuff like a 10.1.2 update. Just once we'd like to say something like "that quad-processor 2 GHz Power Mac G5 with a 36-inch Cinema Display isn't out yet" only to find one sitting on our doorstep thirty minutes later. Yeah, that'd show us.

Anyway, while we're normally pretty cautious about such things, last night we were feeling a bit saucy, so we plunged forth and clicked "Update Now" without so much as a glance at MacFixIt to see if the updater had been causing widespread mayhem and laying waste to small villages. One day later, we're able to report that, at least in our experience, 10.1.2 is completely benign; all of our data is right where we left it, and the only noticeable problem was that our Internet prefs had been reset to default values, meaning that Internet Explorer fired up once until we got things pointing back to OmniWeb. A less eventful update we've yet to encounter.

Most other people appear to have gotten off similarly light, although there are definitely a few glitches cropping up here and there; 10.1.2 appears to have broken support for the Toshiba PDR-M70 digital camera, as well as for certain USB memory card readers. MacFixIt also mentions apparent issues with Virtual PC and Now Up-To-Date and Now Contact, but we assume that those products just need a minor tweak to get going again. Like we said, minor stuff. If you were hoping for widespread reports of Macs running 10.1.2 becoming self-aware, sprouting spiked metal tentacles, and bloodily taking over their households in a coordinated bid for world domination and a future in which humans are merely slaves to our mechanized overlords (and really, who wasn't?), sadly, this is not the update you've been waiting for.

In fact, despite the update's 30 MB worth of heft, we have to say, we don't notice any difference after having applied it. That's more of a testament to how little we actually do on our PowerBook, though, rather than a slight on 10.1.2 itself. After all, among other things, the update improves USB and FireWire device support (we don't connect any), adds support for PC Card storage devices and media readers (we don't own any), adds IrDA modem support (means nothing to us, but according to The Register it's a big deal overseas), improves networking (ours worked fine anyway) and printing (we don't print), and includes a newer version of the Apache web server (which we've never used). In short, the update is nifty-- but if you mostly use Mac OS X to check the TV Guide listings and confirm obscure actor sightings via IMDb without having to get up off the couch, then you can probably take it or leave it.