Sounds like Apple's got a hit on its hands, at least if the ratings are any indication; MacMinute reports that, during a keynote of his own yesterday, Phil "Love Me, Love My Carpet" Schiller revealed that no fewer than 300,000 rabid Mac users descended upon Apple's hapless flock of servers and snapped up the public beta release of Safari, the company's spiffy new web browser, on its first day of release. "Is that a lot?" you ask. "Well, yes," we answer. According to Phil, the most release-day downloads Apple's logged previously was a comparatively puny 100,000 back when iTunes came out, so it's pretty safe to say that this totally crushes Apple's previous first-day download record into a pile of fine dust and then sets said dust on fire.

Just to put things into a smidgen of perspective (aw, c'mon-- a teensy little bit won't kill you), let's think about those numbers another way. During the Stevenote, Fearless Leader indicated that there are now five million active users of Mac OS X, did he not? Well, Safari's a Mac OS X-only browser, which means that roughly one in every sixteen users who could run Safari ran out and grabbed it the first day it went public. And actually, that's not really true, either, since Safari requires Jaguar, and we sincerely doubt that 100% of the Mac OS X user community has shelled out for the upgrade. So we're blithely going to take a semi-educated guess and figure that there are maybe three million Jaguar users tops, which means that one in ten of the target market felt an urgent need to scarf up Safari within its first twenty-four hours on this side of Cupertino's Silicon Curtain.

Of course, first-day download numbers aren't necessarily an indication of success; just because 300,000 people tuned in to watch doesn't mean that 300,000 people actually liked what they saw. What this really says is that Apple did a good job in identifying a need-- i.e., Mac OS X users want a web browser that isn't IE, and if that browser is free and comes from Apple, all the better. Whether or not Safari fills that need remains to be seen, but so far the feedback filtering into the AtAT compound has been pretty overwhelmingly positive. Oh, sure, most people want some additional features tossed in, such as tabbed browsing, bookmarks that can indicate if a site's changed since the last visit, etc. (Personally, we're hoping Apple adds RSS support, a macro-type feature like OmniWeb's Shortcuts, and at the very least the ability to see the URL of a link before actually clicking it.) But this is a beta, Apple can add features over time, and overall, thumbs are already pointing in the general direction known as "up."

If you're the type that likes to keep your ear to the ground in some generally seedy places, you may have encountered some rumors a while back that Microsoft had no plans to develop Internet Explorer for Mac OS X beyond bug fixes to the current version. If that turns out to be true, it's now pretty easy to guess why. On a broader scale, we're getting pretty intrigued to see how this swipe at Redmond (not to mention that other little shot across the bow-- namely, Keynote's attempt to out-PowerPoint PowerPoint) affects Microsoft's plans to continue porting Office to the Mac, since the company is no longer contractually obligated to do so. Is there a war brewin' behind the scenes?

So we stumbled across a notice at MacMinute yesterday informing us that Steve Jobs was slated to make a guest appearance on CNBC's Business Center show last night-- which is just about the only thing that'd ever get us to tune in to CNBC in the first place, because we're actually pretty allergic to that sort of all-financial and/or -news programming. It gives us a rash, in fact. And any more than about sixteen seconds' worth of exposure to C-SPAN sends us into anaphylactic shock. Still, a dose of Steve is a dose of Steve, so we figured we'd risk it, and thanks to the miracle of TiVo we were able to minimize our exposure to the non-Steve aspects of that accursed channel. (In fact, we watched Blue's Clues-- a classic Steve one, not one with that new Joe guy who just doesn't cut it with us-- while Business Center was recording. Much more our speed.)

If you missed it, Think Secret has a lovely summary of Steve's appearance, but trust us, you didn't miss all that much. Most of what he managed to squeeze into his four minutes on the air was just repeated from his keynote, e.g. his "Year of the Notebook" spiel, his "Retail's Kicking Butt" spiel, etc., and he did manage to show off a 17-inch PowerBook quickly without really having time to explain why it was so special. But there was definitely at least one moment worth catching, if only for its sheer "Uh-Oh" value.

Interviewer Sue Herera asked Steve whether he saw any evidence of a broader economic recovery, and his answer wasn't just blunt-- it was almost chilling in its delivery. Think Secret's quote doesn't quite do justice to the finality and the palpable sense of despair underlying his response. Here's how it went down: "[deep breath] Uh, you know, [heavy sigh, shaking head, throws hands up in resignation] our headlights don't go out that far, but right now I'd have to say no. [nodding grimly] We're not. We see businesses still, uh... still, uh... not buying much right now. And I think there's a lot of uncer-- a lot of uncertainty right now."

So there you have it, folks: Uncle Steve's bleak economic outlook, straight from the lips of Mercurial Man himself. Sort of. So stock up on generic canned soup, burn phone books for heat, and settle in for a long winter's recession. Needless to say, your survival hinges on your ability to pinch every penny, so save all your money for life's essentials: Tater Tots, cable, and maybe a 17-inch PowerBook or two...

And if one harbinger of doom isn't enough for you today, how about this Macworld headline? "Even Woz Still Uses Mac OS 9." That's right, folks; apparently the Other Steve, a man well-respected-- nay, deified-- for his technological prowess and vision (remember, he's the one who built the actual computers while Jobs built the company), has sided with the anti-Mac OS X crowd and chosen to stick steadfastly with old-school tech. Is he a "Save Fitts's Law" activist? Is he religiously opposed to the overuse of horizontal stripes? We can't say. But if Apple's cofounder is pooh-poohing the company's next-generation operating system, clearly it won't survive the snub.

And you all know what comes next, right? The financial collapse of Apple, Jobs's return to his home planet in shame, Microsoft's further entrenchment in all things tech, Bill Gates's eventual role as Grand High Emperor of Earth, and his sale of half the human race as slave labor and food to the alien beings who have long secretly designed his product's interfaces. Consternation! Uproar! The sky is falling! The End is Nigh! These pretzels are making me thirsty!!

Or not. Okay, okay... we admit it, that headline is a little overly alarmist. If you read the actual article, you'll learn that Woz does use Mac OS X-- but anybody who owns dozens of Macs is bound to own several that run better with older operating systems. (Heck, we've got a Mac Classic here in the AtAT compound running nothing but System 7.0.1 and KeyWack; that doesn't mean we aren't all Jaguariffic on the G4.) Says Woz, "I use [Mac OS X] but I have computers with [Mac OS 9] doing important tasks. Why would I switch when it just works forever?" Fair enough.

And even though he agrees that, for cost and/or compatibility reasons, it's still not the right time for everybody to upgrade to Mac OS X, he does note that "new Macintosh users are best served by choosing Mac OS X for their first machine," pointing out that it'll offer a far better experience" than Mac OS 9. So there you have it: Woz is not a HIG-thumping anti-Aqua "Give me Platinum or give me death" firebrand. And, you know, we're almost a little sad about that; the future of mankind as a slave race to aliens notwithstanding, it would've made for some nice plot twists...