Whoops! Remember yesterday when we pointed out that Palm Desktop for Mac OS X was "sort of" out-- in the form of a public beta version that would be quicker to obtain by typing in sequences of 1's and 0's read to you over the phone than to download? Well, apparently it's not even "sort of" out; it's only sort of "sort of" out. MacNN managed to ferret out the reason why software that was destined to be a hot download was hosted on a server evidently sitting on a 'net connection with the bandwidth of two tin cans and a piece of string... but the explanation leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

Here's the official party line: according to Brian Cantoni of Palm, that public beta wasn't actually a public beta after all. Or, at least, it wasn't supposed to be-- it was "intended only for Palm employees initially." But word leaked out, as word is wont to do, and suddenly demand for the file notched up a couple of degrees of magnitude. That presumably explains why the FTP server on which the software resided proved to be woefully inadequate for a mass-market download frenzy; it was only supposed to be able to handle a handful of Palmfolk, not every slavering Mac OS X fan with a Palm OS-based handheld and a loathing for Classic.

Of course, it doesn't explain why an allegedly private beta was posted for Internet download with no password required to access the installer. Nor does it explain why just anyone can sign up to get the software; the download link is emailed to anyone who fills out a form, and one would think it'd be an easy matter for Palm to reject any email addresses that aren't those of Palm employees. And here's the real kicker: if this software was intended only for internal beta testers, why does the term public beta appear no fewer than seven times on one web page, not including the URL of the page itself ("http://www.palm.com/macintosh/publicbeta/")?

In fact, if it weren't for a total lack of links to the "Public Beta" page on Palm's site, we'd be inclined to suspect that the whole "it was supposed to be a private public beta" excuse was just a convenient job-saving cover story for someone who ordered a lot less bandwidth than he or she probably should have. But then, we're also inclined to suspect that fluoride in the country's water supply is part of a plot by an international consortium of shadowy evildoers who are chemically driving the population to seemingly voluntary Windows use, so you really can't go by us. In any event, stay tuned for the real Palm public beta sometime next month, and keep watching the skies...