Sure, everybody loves Panther, but the only people who don't acknowledge that it has "issues" are also insisting that the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney is stored in the catacombs beneath Disney World. (Rational people know full well that the Waltsicle was relocated to Disney's California Adventure earlier this year.) Heck, in addition to an exciting cornucopia of lesser problems and incompatibilities, Mac OS X 10.3 packs a couple of crowd-pleasers so freaky that Apple had to address them publicly-- namely, the FireWire data loss "situation" (it's allegedly not Apple's fault, so it's not a "bug") and the FileVault "Preferences 'n' More" Corruption issue.

But if reports of crazy data loss have kept you from installing Panther on your beloved Mac for fear of losing a limb in the ensuing mayhem, wait no more: faithful viewer Adam J. Bezark informed us of Mac OS X 10.3.1's existence within minutes of its spontaneous appearance on Apple's Software Update servers, and it allegedly fixes both the FireWire problem and the FileVault issue (although Apple still insists that owners of FireWire 800 drives contact the drive manufacturers for firmware updates "even with the improvements in this update"). It also "delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability" for printing and WebDAV, and incorporates the recent Security Updates. Not bad for a 1.5 MB download.

By the way, at broadcast time, Apple's 10.3.1 info page was still claiming that the download required, paradoxically enough, Mac OS X 10.3.1. We have been assured that this is merely a typo and not evidence of a looming collapse of the space-time continuum.

Sadly, there's no mention of a fix in 10.3.1 for the kernel panics we've been experiencing on a 12-inch PowerBook ever since the Panther install. The count is up to seven or eight now, averaging about one every other day, all of them occurring upon waking from sleep, except one that occurred upon sleeping from wake. Still, we leapt right in and installed 10.3.1 anyway, without even waiting to see if it was one of those evil updaters that makes things worse-- because we figured, hey, what could possibly be worse than a kernel panic every other day?

Which is kind of a stupid thing to think, of course, since there's all sorts of fates worse than that. A railroad spike through the head, for one. Also, being forced to sit through Cop & 1/2. There are a few others, too, we're pretty sure.

Luckily, though, so far the scattered reports of 10.3.1 weirdness seem relatively minor and mostly fixable with simple driver updates: missing USB devices, continuing FireWire woes, slow restarts, that sort of thing. And for what it's worth, we haven't had another kernel panic yet-- although it's only been a day. We'll let you know if it happens again. Heck, you'll probably hear the screams.