And the stays of execution just keep on coming! Yesterday we mentioned reports that Quark was running damage control on its hideously late Mac OS X port of XPress by promising its biggest customers that they'll still be able to purchase Mac OS 9-booting Macs even after Apple releases newer Mac OS X-only hardware; however, there's no actual evidence that Apple is really on board with that little scheme, so for all we know Quark simply aims to buy up a slew of Power Macs itself and then resell them to any customers actually so married to Quark as to shell out good cash for outdated equipment. (No, we're not in the prepress business, but man, it just sounds a lot easier to switch to InDesign, doesn't it?)

Well, if you're rightly skeptical of any info issuing forth from a company headed up by Fred "Evil Macs Are Conspiring With Satan To Steal My Protective Tinfoil Hat" Ebrahimi, Think Secret now has word that Apple does plan to continue to offer Mac OS 9 hardware until June-- at least in the Education channel. See, XPress and ProTools aren't the only titles that are still mired in Mac OS 9; apparently there's a ton of educational software that's yet to be Carbonized, and until a certain list of core applications works properly in its new operating system, "Apple will continue to offer our Education customers some configurations of the current eMac, iBook, and CRT iMac product lines that will boot into Mac OS 9."

Of course, since Apple's "no more Mac OS 9 booting" edict only applies to new hardware released starting next month, that could simply indicate that Apple had no plans to update those particular product lines until June anyway, which is at least surely the case with the CRT iMac. At least, we surely don't anticipate any announcements along the lines of "Presenting the New G3 iMac: Now Mac OS X-Only, and Available in Your Choice of Three New Colors: Glistening Slug, Vegemite, or 'What's That Stain?' Yellow." But it's the not knowing for sure that makes this all so much fun, right?

Anyway, the report that Mac OS 9 is at least safe for the time being in the Education market allegedly comes from Apple itself, so it may be at least marginally more trustworthy than Quark's "hey, everything's just splefty" phone calls to its Mac-using customers. So those of you who are stalwartly opposed to everything Mac OS X stands for (hey, we can't imagine why, but then again, there are people out there who will voluntarily go see The Hot Chick, so anything's possible) now have another option if you need a new Mac next year: go back to school. Heck, everyone can use another degree or two.