We thought it would have taken at least a few days to kick in, but faithful viewer The Mod Imposter informs us that ZDNet's David Coursey evidently succumbed to the influence of Reality Distortion Field energy on his very first day of temporary Mac usage. You may recall that Coursey, a self-proclaimed Mac fan who, strangely enough, uses Windows exclusively and rarely has much good to say about Apple, recently decided to push aside his Wintels and spend a month purely in the Mac realm-- just as an experiment, you understand. The idea was apparently to see whether it's possible for anyone to survive on an all-Mac computing diet. (Why he didn't just ask us, we'll never know; we could have summed up the answer for him in a single resounding "duh.")

Interestingly enough, Coursey isn't using G3-based equipment as he originally stated he would; it seems that someone at Apple got word of his little field trip into Macville and chucked him a PowerBook G4 and one of those newfangled iMacs in hopes of greasing the wheels a little. And get this-- apparently Apple was taking no chances with the outcome of Coursey's grand experiment, because the company invited him into its boardroom for a few "software demos." There's no mention if Steve Jobs was present, but we figure that at the very least the guy was hiding behind the curtains and pumping Coursey so full of RDF that when he walked out of that place he would have glowed in the dark.

How do we know? Well, jeez, just look at the opening line to David's first journal entry: "On the first day of my month as a Mac user, I made a momentous decision. I made up my mind to change careers." He takes a quick trip to Apple's boardroom, looks at Final Cut Pro running on a TiBook, and suddenly the guy's ready to chuck the journalism shtick and become the next Coppola? Yeah, that sort of thing happens all the time without Jobsian intervention. But whether or not you believe that a massive infusion of RDF was responsible for Coursey's sudden career epiphany, you have to appreciate how good it looks when a stodgy Wintellian tech pundit watches Apple software at work for a few minutes and suddenly decides that his true calling is to "work with pictures and sound, not just words."

Sure, once he got home and "better sense prevailed" (read: Steve stopped zapping his brain with Happy Rays), he reconsidered his need to change careers and discovered a "few snags" as he tried to adapt his ingrained Windows workflow to the Macintosh Way. But his overall tone is still very complimentary, so this whole Mac experiment sounds like it's gotten off on the right foot-- and we wouldn't be surprised if some of Coursey's glowing comments show up in future Apple marketing materials. Thus ends Week 1 of David Coursey's plunge into Macdom; here's hoping the rest of the month is as positive.

It's happening again-- we're starting to suffer from Software Update Withdrawal Syndrome. Instead of just letting our Macs check for updates once a week as scheduled, we find ourselves continually poking at that "Update Now" button in hopes of discovering something new... you know, unlike the past four hundred times when we kept getting that list of driver updates for printers we don't use. We're not asking for much, here; an OS point release, maybe a bug-fix patch for iTunes-- heck, even a minor revision to the DVD Player would take the edge off. C'mon, Apple, throw us Update Junkies a bone.

But in lieu of any actual updaters, we've been forced to settle for Update Methadone-- namely, endless speculation and research about what those future updaters might bestow upon our Macs when they finally do arrive. In the shorter term, there's Mac OS X 10.1.3, which Think Secret reports has just been seeded to developers-- and pulled back again. No word on why it was pulled, but apparently this build is stamped "5Q28" and delivers the usual sort of point-release stuff: "expanded support for CD burners, improved digital camera support, and tweaks to OpenGL," along with better networking and security. Nothing to jump up and down about, but at this point we're jonesing so hard for an update, we'd most likely look upon its release as a cross between free chocolate and the Second Coming.

Further out in the future, of course, is 10.2 (code-named "Jaguar"), which is apparently still slated for a July release. Faithful viewer Danny Ricci noticed that a handful of screenshots and even QuickTime movies of the current 10.2 developmental build (6B11) are available via a link over at MacRumors, providing just enough sustenance for those of us who crave updatey goodness. There isn't much revealed in those files that we didn't already expect-- spring-loaded folders, for instance-- but it's nice to see that a standard Zingg!-like "Open With..." contextual menu option is heading for the Finder, and a quick glimpse of an "Erase CD/DVD-RW Disc..." menu item in Disk Copy implies that those of us with SuperDrives may eventually get to use DVD-RWs after all. (That's new, right?)

Like we said, it's nothing terribly thrilling, but if you're as addicted to software updates as we are, this stuff might get you through the next couple of days without constant vomiting and thinking there are bugs crawling all over your skin. Enjoy.

We know the drill; plenty of you are scoping out those new G4-based iMacs while standing in an ever-deepening puddle of drool and fantasizing about saying "to heck with the kids' college fund" and engaging in an orgy of debt-amassing that would be astonishingly bad for your credit rating. (Well, maybe you were, but now you've been distracted by pondering the simultaneous elegance and grossness of the phrase "ever-deepening puddle of drool." Trust us, it'll pass.) The sad fact of the matter is that we're wallowing in one ugly economy, and plenty of us simply lack the liquidity necessary to snag one of those 800 MHz jobbies, pump it up to a solid gig of RAM, maybe toss a set of Soundsticks on there, and wallow in that joyous glow of New Mac Ownership. Instead you're stuck with an LC II, a twelve-inch CRT, and a world of regret at having invested your life savings in eTulipBulb.com a couple of years back.

But fear not, because we're here to tell you that even the chronically insolvent can afford a new iMac if they just know how to keep their eyes peeled for bargains. Now, we know what you're thinking: "Oh yeah, six bucks off, an extra 128 MB of RAM, and maybe a free printer-- that's all well and good, but it still doesn't change the fact that I barely have enough cash on hand to buy posterboard and a Sharpie so I can make a 'WILL WORK FOR FOOD' sign." To that we say, pshaw! (Yes, it's a real word-- look it up.) If you think that a decent bundle and a few bucks off list price is the best deal you can find for a new iMac, you're clearly not looking hard enough. Why, faithful viewer Mark found a page over at ClubMac which lists a ton of iMacs, new and old, all for the low low price of $.00. And even you can afford that.

Yes, at broadcast time (and we don't expect it to stay that way), that ClubMac page was advertising an 800 MHz G4-based iMac with a free Lexmark printer and an extra 128 MB of RAM, all for $.00. 384 MB of RAM not enough for you? No problem-- all the RAM on that page is also $.00, as is a set of Harman Kardon Soundsticks, so go wild and trick that puppy out. In fact, just about everything on that page is marked as free... except for a $99.99 Hewlett-Packard printer and a $287.95 copy of Microsoft Office. (Gee, why are we not surprised?)

While we admit that there's a slight chance that this is all some sort of mistake and ClubMac isn't just overly generous with their discounts, we prefer to see the glass as half-full. Whether or not you follow suit is entirely up to you. Now pardon us, but we're off to order about three hundred of these things to get our Christmas shopping done nice and early for a change...