Good news, everyone! Despite our initial "Yeah, Whatever" reaction to the recent release of Mac OS X 10.3.3, several viewers have written in with thumbs-up reviews. A number of people in cross-platform environments praise 10.3.3's non-broken implementation of the Finder's network browsing ability. A few expressed gratitude for Energy Saver's newfound direct support for certain Uninterruptible Power Supplies. Some who hadn't gone in and fixed the problem themselves were pleased that 10.3.3 fixes the slow-booting problem that afflicted several users of 10.3.2. One or two people reported that the OpenGL improvements fixed problems in certain important 3D applications (meaning, ones in which most of the rendering is not of blood and severed limbs). And one guy just really likes the new version number, because-- and we quote-- "you can never have too many threes."

Ooooookay.

For us, though, the most promising thing about 10.3.3 is probably its role as evidence that new Power Macs are imminent. As pointed out by a reader at Mac OS Rumors, if you go poking around in the Localizable.strings file buried in the System Profiler libraries of 10.3.3, you'll reportedly find a second Power Mac model listed, which doesn't appear in the same file in 10.3.2. We're taking that on faith, mind you, since we haven't had a chance to 10.3.3ify just yet, and even if it is true it doesn't necessarily mean anything-- remember the .WMA icons in iTunes? But still, in light of numerous viewers pointing out that any promos supporting a Power Mac revision on or near March 27th may in fact simply reveal normal end-of-quarter attempts to boost last-minute sales, we'll take anything we can get.

Case in point: MacRumors now reports that it has "received word that Power Mac and Display updates are in the final stages and should be released shortly"-- although there's no new word on just what "shortly" means. Still, lump that in with the existing end-of-March hints (we just this second received email from Apple reminding us that its "special memory offer ends March 27") and those new chunklets of evidence buried in 10.3.3 (sketchy though they may be), and we can't help but start to get mighty optimistic about a release within the next two weeks or so. We're not placing any bets or anything, but still.

And by the way, yes, reportedly the new displays finally ditch the oh-so-last-year "pinstripes 'n' clear plastic" look to fall in line with Apple's current aluminum fetish. Says MacRumors, "according to sources, the new displays do resemble the recent artist rendition of upcoming Aluminum Displays based on a slide seen in a routine Apple presentation-- with monitor feet resembling the Power Mac G5 handles." So if the mere prospect of owning a dual 2.5ish GHz G5 doesn't have you scrambling to open your wallet, how about the prospect of getting a matching display to go with it? Ooooooh, fashionable.