Just where the hairy heck have we been, you ask? Well, since there are only two people still bothering to tune in (Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!), we're not going to be particularly fastidious about the details, but suffice it to say that 2003 is barely 1/12th over and it's already going down as one of the ickier years in recent personal memory. The broad strokes are thus: take three weeks of heinous, life-interrupting travel, add two weeks of blind retching illness, and darned if you don't wind up just a little bit behind-- especially since AtAT production generally requires that we get no more than two or three hours of sleep a night, and that turned out to be a no-no what with the flu recovery and all. So we're still at the mercy of various and sundry lurking non-AtAT-related deadlines (for gigs that actually pay, seeing as the bills are mounting up something fierce) and so you shouldn't by any means interpret this episode-- our first in a fortnight-- as a sign that we're on top of things and back in the saddle. On the contrary: we're so far behind we can actually see our own butts about twenty feet up the road.

Still, something made us break our hibernation and poke our heads out of the cave yesterday morning to see what was shakin' down Cupertino way, which makes us suspect that we may indeed be mildly psychic. Could it have been a mere coincidence that we just happen to have checked in with Apple on the very day that the company unleashed new Power Macs upon an unsuspecting populace? Maybe. And maybe creamed corn will win the Viewers' Choice award in the next "Most Popular Canned Food" contest. We just tend to doubt it, is all.

Now, there is one benefit to our recent virtual hermit life: since we've essentially severed all contact with the outside world, we haven't read a single reaction to the new Power Macs-- which means we know that our own impressions of the new hardware are pure and untainted by outside opinion. So what's our take on the new pro desktops? We think they rate a solid "eh." There's lots of good new stuff in there: FireWire 800, internal Bluetooth support (at least, that's what the press release implies), support for AirPort Extreme, a faster SuperDrive, and nifty new graphics. And a speed boost (to a max of dual 1.42 GHz) plus a price reduction is always welcome. Still, even though we have to fume about how much more we had to shell out for our barely-a-year-old dual 800 MHz G4 (and how much less we got in the box), the truth is, we're surprisingly unlusty when it comes to scoring one of these new beasties.

It's worth mentioning that our lack of enthusiasm here may have a lot to do with a general indifference to anything that isn't directly relevant to the hindquarters of a nine-month-old child ("We may be going to war? Good lord-- what will that do to the price of Huggies?!"), but we suspect we're not the only ones who aren't planning bank heists to raise the capital for an upgrade. Of course, Apple certainly expected that-- this is a minor update to an existing line, hence the low-key intro instead of a big dog-and-pony show at the Expo a few weeks back. As for whether the new Power Macs will finally trigger some spending and get those pro desktop sales numbers inching above "Lackluster" territory, well, that's anyone's guess. Ours is that there won't be many reports of people spraining their clicking fingers in a mad dash to place an order...

Hold the phone-- maybe these new Power Macs aren't just minor updates after all. We did a little digging around just to see whether we missed anything significant, and apparently we did, boy howdy. MacCentral's coverage of the hardware release notes something that seems to have escaped a mention in Apple's press release: the new systems may look like the previous models, but they sure as heck don't sound like them.

In case you haven't heard one before (which means you've never been within a forty-foot radius of one while it's running), the previous Power Macs were loud. And we mean loud. We've got a Quicksilver G4, and we thought it was loud (it is; its dull roar is actually distracting when we're watching TV in the next room, which has often caused us to miss a subtle nuance of DeVol's music on "The Brady Bunch"), but when we heard one of its successors-- appropriately dubbed the "G4 Windtunnel" by the public-- we found that our compound was actually blessed by relative Power Mac silence. Who knew?

But here's the thing: the new Power Macs, while they may just look like Windtunnels with some faster gear tossed onto the motherboard, are reportedly a whole mess quieter than their predecessors. The noise problem "has been fixed," says Apple; quoth the company's director of Power Mac Product Marketing, "when the systems get out in the marketplace, I'm sure our customers are going to be delighted at how quiet these systems are."

Yowza! We can now officially withdraw our suggestion that Apple ship every Power Mac with a pair of industrial-strength earplugs. Actually, maybe we'll hold off until we actually get to hear one of these things with our own ears; the very fact that Apple even let the Windtunnels out the door in the first place implies that the guy doing the final quality inspection must have gone to one too many Sabbath concerts in his youth.

Meanwhile, the lofty Cinema Display is shrinking; when it debuted way back in August of '99, its screen measured a meaty twenty-two inches from corner to corner, but as of yesterday, it's measuring in at a slightly less Rubenesque twenty inches. Granted, people often shrink a bit when they get old, and three and a half years is a whole lotta time in computer years, but is there perhaps something else going on, here? Like, say, is a certain widescreen display we know and love suffering from an eating disorder? Will it soon be the subject of a movie on Lifetime? If so, will said movie star Tori Spelling and/or Meredith Baxter? And, most importantly of all, could it possibly have a title cooler than Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?

Valid questions, one and all. But the Cinema Display's shrinkage isn't all bad. For one thing, its actual screen real estate appears to have grown a smidge; whereas the original 22-incher packed a resolution of 1600x1024 pixels (not too shabby), the new 20-inch model boasts the slightly larger (and even less standard) resolution of 1680x1050. That's an extra 125,600 pixels for you to play with, crammed into a smaller footprint. Better still, even as the Cinema Display was shaving off a couple of inches, it dropped a massive chunk of sticker price: one of these svelte new babies will only set you back $1299.

And, of course, for those of you who crave the extra inches, there's always its big brother, the 23-inch Cinema HD Display. Its specs haven't changed, but its price sure has: this 1920x1200 behemoth now costs a mere $1999, a price which may send a lot of people into sticker shock (especially since that comes out to 28 straight days of 20-minute phone calls with 10-10-220-- thanks, Alf and Hulk Hogan!), but which is in fact extremely cheap, considering the same thing cost $3499 just ten months ago. Listen! Hear that scream? That's some poor shlub who bought a Cinema HD Display over the weekend at its original price, and is now contemplating what sound is made when you take $1500 in small bills, stuff it into a paper sack, set it on fire, and toss out a car window at 75 mph.

Finally, for those of you who aren't hung up on the whole size issue, don't worry, you catch a break, too: the entry-level 17-inch display just got shaved from $999 to a pretty gosh-darn reasonable $699. Man, with prices like these, we've apparently wandered into Crazy Steve's Discount Display Hut: "Our prices are so low, you'll think my RDF is on the fritz!"