It's old news to those of you who forgo sleep for vigilance and compulsively stab at the "Check Now" button in Software Update every twelve seconds until your clicking fingers bleed (and hey, who doesn't?), but just in case you haven't noticed, Mac OS X 10.3.6 is available for download as of last Friday-- and weighing in at 92 MB for the combo updater, it's a big 'un. Of course, you would have expected that had you also compulsively followed the constant rumor reports on every little build update during 10.3.6's ongoing development; the odds are decent that you at least caught the latest ones, because heaven knows there wasn't much else to follow last week.

So is the drama drought over? Let's just say that the answer is an unqualified "sort of." Because even though 10.3.6 brings a raft of changes across the board (including "enhancements" to third party app compatibility, external device support, networking, file sharing, user logins, printing, font management, disc burning, iPod connections, graphics support, FileVault, PoleVault, Bluetooth, RedTooth, and SnaggleTooth), none of them is very exciting-- none of the intended changes, at least. See, faithful viewer Phillip De Vita was the first of several faithful viewers who informed us that they installed 10.3.6, it works great, it feels snappier, and oh by the way it ATE THEIR FREAKIN' HARD DRIVES.

Not all hard drives, mind you; just external FireWire ones, and not even all of those. But MacFixIt confirms that the problem is more widespread than anyone would like-- at least, anyone who doesn't trade in human misery like we do-- and reports that symptoms range from drives not mounting to drives not booting to drives flat-out losing some or all of their data. Sound familiar? It should, because previous Mac OS X updates have also introduced certain "irregularities" in how FireWire drives have been handled, but this one sounds more prevalent and potentially nastier than the issues that cropped up in 10.3.5, 10.3.4, and 10.3.3. Indeed, this one sounds a lot more like last year's Halloween data loss bugaboo lurking within the original Panther release, which Apple blamed on a bug in "external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02."

But if this is a bout of déjà vu, it's one of the déjà-vuiest we've ever experienced. Check out the "important note" that Apple has tacked onto the bottom of the 10.3.6 download page: "Apple has identified an issue with external FireWire hard drives using the Oxford 922 bridge chip-set with firmware version 1.02 that can result in the loss of data stored on the disk drive. Even with the improvements available in this update, Apple recommends you update the firmware on your FireWire drive. Please contact your drive manufacturer for more information." What the--?

Oh, wait... that warning is on the 10.3.5 download page, too, so for all we know it's been slapped onto every Panther update for a year and we just tuned it out because we got sick of seeing it. Well, somehow we doubt that everyone suffering from missing/unbootable/toasted FireWire drives since installing 10.3.6 has had the "evil firmware" all this time without noticing, so we have a feeling that Apple may soon be blaming a firmware version other than 1.02. In any case, 10.3.6 clearly introduces some sort of FireWire weirdness, so personally we're going to stay well away until Apple issues an update to the update. Paranoia pays off again!