Rejoice, AirPort 3.4 casualties: no longer shall you suffer startlingly reduced signal strength or the heartbreak of repeated dropped connections, for sweet relief is at hand! Soon you'll be able to enjoy all those AirPort 3.4-specific features like "improved antenna output control," "performance improvements for WPA security implementations," and "stronger, leaner legs, glutes, and hips" with all the signal strength and rock-solid performance you experienced under previous releases of the AirPort software. Trust us, your 3.4-related worries are over.

Probably. We're actually just guessing, here, but it seems like a pretty decent bet.

See, faithful viewer DavidRock tipped us off to the sudden appearance of AirPort Update 3.4.1 in his Software Update panel. Interestingly enough, while the title and version number of the posted README lists version 3.4.1, everything else on the page still refers to 3.4, implying strongly that Apple simply reused the same document and literally nothing has changed from the 3.4 version released last week-- at least, nothing that Apple wants to admit. After all, stating that "AirPort Update 3.4.1 corrects numerous egregious problems introduced by version 3.4, which never should have left the building, but our Quality Control personnel were all too busy doing the weird floating arms experiment to notice" might reveal just a little more about Apple's software release process than would be prudent.

So we're pretty sure that 3.4.1 is purely a bug-fix release that could technically have been numbered "3.4 Take 2." Still, it might be a good idea to wait a bit while the early adopters charge in blindly (those guys are so useful, aren't they?) just to make sure that 3.4.1 doesn't introduce some other heinous bugs-- like, say, a dramatically increased RF output that cooks your kidneys after thirty minutes of continued use causing a painful and horrifying death. Or maybe, heaven forfend, a typo.

We're guessing that reports on 3.4.1 will start showing up on MacFixIt and MacInTouch any minute now, and they'll probably be along the lines of "works great, fixes everything, life is once again a boundless vista of wonder and delight." Still, the only thing worse than weak signals and dropped connections is strong signals and dropped connections coupled with internal organs nuked medium rare. We just advise a little caution, is all. Remember, you're dealing with a Quality Control department with crazy floaty arms; never has there been a more piquant recipe for disaster. Just pray that no one teaches them how to look through holes in their hands or they'll wind up so distracted they'll ship PowerBooks coated in rat poison and iMacs with razor blades poking out of their enclosures.