This week's Apple goodies

I didn't watch video from the announcement today, but here's my initial take on the upgrades:

- PowerBook G4: Nice, but obvious. Better resolution is pretty spiffy, faster drives and DDR2 support nice, and the claimed battery life improvement will be slick as well. Unfortunately there's no speedbump - I was hoping for another minor clockspeed improvement (to, say, 1.8 GHz or so). And that will be the end of the G4-based PowerBook line forever (most likely) - they're pretty much the first systems slated for an Extreme Intel Makeover.

-PowerMac G5 (Dually). OK - by switching to the dual-core G5 chip they can get a more powerful box with less cost. Nice. The PCI Express makeover is slick, too. But the new dual processor, dual-core version at the high end is pretty danged sweet - dually duallies are going to rock, even at the slightly reduced clock speed. I'm liking that a lot.

- Aperture: This week's "One More Thing(tm)", Aperture sounds like a nice addition to the pro photography toolset - but not a true Photoshop competitor. Which is good for now - pissing off Adobe is not a bright idea in the middle of a delicate processor transition. It's definitely a shot across their bow, though, and a warning to not drop the ball over the next year or so.

So now since July the whole Apple line has been refreshed - unless Apple drops a bombshell at January MacWorld Expo and announces Intel machines early, there will be at best minor tweaks to the line over the next 6-8 months. Maybe the duallies will find their way into Xserve soon, but I wouldn't bank on it. Enjoy!