What's that you say? You're restless and vaguely dissatisfied with life because nothing much interesting is happening in the world of Apple these days? Hey, don't look at us-- we don't create the plot twists, we just milk 'em for every last droplet of sweet, sweet melodrama and then toss the dried-out husks onto the Plot Desiccated Corpse Pile we've got out back. If the joint just isn't jumping to your satisfaction, direct all complaints to those lazy do-nothings out in Cupertino. What, like they're soooo busy trying to get Tiger ready for a no-later-than-June release that they just don't have any time to spare for corporate espionage, assassination conspiracies, entertaining bouts of trauma-induced amnesia, or long-lost twins reappearing only to frame their siblings for murder? Sheesh, even stodgy ol' Hewlett-Packard found the time to kick its CEO to the curb today-- and any reality in which HP is cranking out more corporate melodrama than Apple is probably not one in which we'd like to spend any great length of time.

So it's a darn good thing that Apple has seen fit to bestow upon us the roller-coaster thrills of yet another incremental Mac OS X update: as noted by faithful viewer Tivor X-09137, Mac OS X 10.3.8 is available immediately, both in a reasonably svelte 27.7 MB "Delta Update," and a "Combo Update" that's an understandably more zaftig 103 MB in size. And if you're the type who thinks that a point-release OS update can't possibly deliver spine-tingling excitement beyond all mortal ken, this may just be the one that changes your mind. For example, if you happen to have one of the "certain" PowerBook G4s that's been suffering "an issue in which a 'flicker' could be seen when navigating DVD menus in DVD Player," guess what? 10.3.8 allegedly fixes that. We know, you're weak in the knees with the mind-blowing profundity of it all.

But wait, it gets even better: Mac OS X also "improves the performance of Blizzard World of Warcraft's 'Full Screen Glow' video feature," prevents fans in a Power Mac G5 from spinning "erratically at unexpected times, such as when SETI@home software is running," and improves Mail and Address Book performance when they make LDAP queries via a "Cisco DistributedDirector DNS server." So if you have a G5 on which you play World of Warcraft while running SETI in the background and it's plugged into one of those Cisco thingules, too, well, clearly 10.3.8 will provide so many incremental improvements, you may simply keel over and die from sheer bliss. Meanwhile, those of us cursed with a "'flat' finger" can rejoice, now that 10.3.8 "addresses 'jumping cursor' issues" caused by our freakish and ill-formed phalanges on a PowerBook trackpad. Apple's commitment to the differently-abled is truly inspiring, isn't it?

Believe it or not, 10.3.8 boasts even more improvements than that, but we'll leave it to you folks to discover just what else is lurking in that mysterious 27.7 MB download. (Hint: if you regularly plug your PowerBook into a widescreen TV to watch DVDs, you're going to be pleasantly surprised!) Suppose Apple will find the time to squeeze in a 10.3.9 update before Tiger ships sometime within the next few months? If they do, here's hoping we'll have our heart pills with us when it's released, because otherwise the excitement's just going to kill us...