These are almost random thoughts, sparked at least in part by a lack of sleep. That lack of sleep was caused, at least in part, by the excitement of Mac OS X...

It is only X more days until Mac OS X is released! Man, am I excited! We have waited for the NeXT OS for so long, it almost seems surreal that its release is imminent. Sure, itis not really complete. Thereis no DVD playback support, for instance, but I can live with that. Itis worth it just to have the final release for us to play with. This is a matter of opinion, mind you, and I respect the fact that yours may differ on this issue. As a point of note, I have taken a good deal of jibing from my "PC Using Friend" (who shall from now on be known as PUF) about the lack of DVD support. I have no swift comebacks, unfortunately, because it really is kind of lame...

Who cares though!?!? There are only X more days! WooooHoooo!!! The story I am getting from some sources is that at least some pre-orders will be delivered on March 21st, but I have no way of verifying that. Note that this is the same day that Apple will be having a big X shindig to officially unveil the final release. If you get your copy before March 24th, please let me know; especially if you live in or around the Austin area.

We are launching into a new world of computing folks. OS X and Aqua are going to change the way you look at your computer. For some of us, that might not be such a good thing, but for the rest of us, it will be great. There are going to be lots of issues for lots of Mac users as we all learn to cope with the way of doing things, but once we dig in, I think that very few people will wish they hadnit tried.

It is interesting that this path began with then CEO Dr. Gil Amelio assigning Ellen Hancock to figure out what they heck was going on with Appleis Copland project. Her advice was to kill the project and buy a new OS to take the Mac OSis place. After toying with BeOS, Dr. Amelio decided that Apple needed to buy NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs had formed after leaving Apple. Three and a half years, and many different road maps later, we are now X days away from Mac OS X. Itis been an amazing ride for those of us watching on the outside. I honestly canit imagine what itis been like for those within Apple.

So what are you going to do with X?