Wha... wait, is it Monday already? Man, we... okay, give us just a sec, here. We have to put some coffee on.

(Laaa da da dum, la dya dya dya dum dum dummmm, la tya da da DUMMMM...)

Okay, we're back. Geez, Monday, huh? How crazy is that? The last thing we remember is being "ushered" (okay, fine, "hurled bodily") out of the Night of the Panther party at the Apple Store Cambridgeside after we failed to take the hint when the staff all changed into pajamas and started yawning conspicuously. Our buddy Nick, slightly the worse for wear after discovering that there was an Open Genius Bar and the Mac Genius in residence could sling a mean Manhattan, then announced that if we were on the west coast we probably wouldn't get thrown out for another three hours, and we hopped in a cab to the airport. The next thing we know, we're waking up at the primary AtAT production system two days later, completely naked except for a pair of commemorative Panther dog tags and a strategically placed IRREGULARLY SHAPED LUGGAGE sticker from Zracna Luka Zagreb.

Whoop, hang on again-- coffee's ready.

(...it's raining men, la da da da it's raining men... whoa-oa-oaaaaa...)

Mmmmm. Okay, much better. Anyway, so, yeah-- that was one crazy shindig (or, technically, 65 crazy shindigs) that Apple threw on Friday, and if you missed the experience, you really should be kicking yourself something fierce. But of course the party's really only just started, since we now have Panther to kick around for the next year or so. Our copy arrived Friday morning and we installed it on a single Mac here at the AtAT compound: Katie's 12-inch PowerBook, which is deemed "not mission-critical" for production purposes and therefore a good first test bed. First impressions: thumbs up, but with the slightest incline to the left. Here are a bunch of quick takes on Apple's latest operating system and vaguely related topics:

• Stability? Uhhhhh, well, less than a day after we upgraded this PowerBook to Panther, it experienced its first kernel panic ever. That doesn't bode terribly well. Here's hoping it was just a one-time thing.

• Faithful viewer Raffi Saltman was the first to note that someone was asleep at the switch as far as the Apple Canada home page was concerned. As of late Monday morning, the site was still counting down to Panther-- or rather, it was counting up since Panther. (It's fixed now.) Couple that with the New York Times reporting that Microsoft's "Longhorn" operating system "is not expected to be shipped until late 1995 or 1996," and it's pretty clear that time warp technology features heavily in all modern operating systems.

• Speed is good. Speed works. And Panther does have some speed to it; after Bare Feats originally reported that Panther offered no speed boost over Jaguar in their initial Power Mac G5 tests, we got a little edgy-- but Panther subjectively feels faster on this PowerBook, and Macs Only! confirms that the speed of many functions is vastly improved on G4 systems, and Bare Feats has since found some speed buried in there. And let's face it-- the G5 owners need more speed like they need an extra belly button. No one needs to carry that much lint.

• Slow is good. Slow works. Faithful viewer macMaestro notes that you can hold down the shift key while invoking Exposé to make it move in slo-mo, just like you always could with the Genie Effect. Cooooool. Now we're going to play with it for another three months.

• A new voice! Where the heck did that come from? Faithful viewer Allen Huffman noticed that the new default text-to-speech voice is "Vicki," which sounds basically like "Victoria" on decaf-- which is a good thing, because man that lady always sounded overwrought. Anyway, Vicki's nice. Give her a whirl.

• Faithful viewer mrmgraphics reports that Microsoft is prominently promoting Panther on its Mactopia web site. Duck and cover, kiddies, 'cause here comes the apocalypse!

So there you have it: life during Panther is at least as wild and crazy as the parties that launched it. And something tells us that it's only going to get crazier.

Meanwhile, this just in: we have no memory of the encounter, but apparently on Friday night we ran into Jeremiah Cohick of Switch fame, who has posted photographic evidence of the meeting. Interestingly enough, though, in the photo Jack is wearing a stylish AtAT mock turtleneck, which was conspicuously missing when we regained consciousness a little while ago. Hmmmmmm. Not that we're making unfounded accusations or anything, but if anyone in the greater Boston area happens to spot Mr. Cohick wearing a black mock turtleneck sporting a nifty red and white logo, you are advised to alert the authorities but not to approach the subject, lest you lose the shirt off your back, as well.

That guy always did have shifty eyes...