My oh my, this certainly has been a week chock full of urgent activity, hasn't it? No doubt you're teetering on the brink of total physical and emotional collapse; practically every day you've been bombarded with demands such as "Quick! Go check out this AirPort Express thing!" or "Hurry! Install the new Security Update right away!" or "Just look at those new Power Macs! Go! NOW!!" or even the seemingly off-topic "Go fix me a turkey pot pie!" Well, calm down, buddy; we're here to tell you that the action has wound down, so you can finally let go of some of that tension and relax.

That is, right after you go download iTunes 4.6. Right now. Make haste, or all is lost! Nothing less than the fate of the universe itself hangs in the balance! AAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Yes, as kindly pointed out by faithful viewer Lynch Allison, the update to which Apple alluded earlier in the week has now graced us with its presence-- either right on time or two days late, depending on whether you're going by Apple's press release or Steve Jobs himself. And the reason it's so vital that you upgrade as soon as humanly possible is that iTunes 4.6 adds support for AirPort Express, so until you run the updater, you won't be able to take advantage of the spiffing new tune-beaming technology known as AirTunes. Oh, sure, certain overly-laid-back individuals have told us to chill because AirPort Express's mid-July ship date constitutes a far greater impediment to the successful deployment of AirTunes, but we figure it's best we focus on these issues one at a time, right?

Besides, what's wrong with a little overzealous planning for the future? Consider Jason Snell over at Macworld; AirPort Express won't ship for over a month, yet, and he's already asking "where does Apple go next?" It's pretty clear, after all, that AirTunes won't begin and end with its initial iTunes-to-Airport Express incarnation; it's a really useful thing for some people, but others will find it pointless. For us, it's darn near perfect. Since we get seizures and a rash if we lose our line of sight to the TV, we've got two PowerBooks and an iBook that rarely leave the living room, so we're thrilled that we can shell out $129 and play music from any of them wirelessly through the same set of speakers. But for people who only have a single iMac sitting in a room on the other side of the house, having to tromp upstairs and down the hall every time they want to change what's playing hardly seems worth the price-- unless it winds up being enough exercise to let them cancel their membership down at the gym.

Anyway, Jason's conclusion is one that's occurred to a lot of people since Monday's announcement: what if, instead of interfacing only with iTunes, AirPort Express could receive a broadcast from iPods as well? After all, the iPod is made to be portable (duh), so wouldn't it be six kinds of nifty if the fourth-generation model allegedly slated for shipment this fall included 802.11 wireless networking and a menu item to choose which in-range AirPort Express unit it should use to play its music? As an added bonus, it could also play Internet radio and stream songs from shared iTunes libraries.

Sadly, there are all sorts of reasons why this probably isn't going to happen as early as this fall, battery life chief among them-- AirPort sucks down a lot of power and the iPod already gets bagged on for its arguably skimpy eight hours of play time. There's also the fact that AirPort Express accepts its music as encrypted Apple Lossless audio data, which means the iPod would have to decode a given song from MP3 or AAC or whatever, re-encode it as Apple Lossless, and encrypt it all on the fly. That's a fair amount of processing going on, which equates to sticking faster processors or dedicated encoding/encryption chips in the iPod, which raises the price and-- again-- drains battery life.

Still, dare to dream. Meanwhile, you have installed that iTunes 4.6 update, right? You haven't? But-- but-- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Well, it's been over twenty-four hours since the new Power Macs went public, and we haven't heard any real complaints other than a smattering of the "these aren't 3 GHz so Steve owes me a free one" comments that any reasonable person would expect in a situation like this. That's good news, because it's not all too uncommon for everyone to be so thrilled and giddy when the product is announced that it takes them a day or so of poring over the posted specs with a fine-toothed comb and an electron scanning microscope before they notice something unpleasant that dampens their enthusiasm. (We happily recall when, about six hours after Steve unveiled the original iMac to hoots, hollers, and mass fainting, a collective question arose from all Mac users as one: "Wait... did he mention anything about a floppy drive?...")

So in part because this is "just" a speed bump, there aren't many changes in the new Power Macs with which the fans can find fault-- but at least one new feature is responsible for a few smiles today. Faithful viewer Nicolas Grison was the first to alert us to an intriguing new blurb on the Power Mac home page, promising a "truly hassle-free upgrade... without days of downtime configuring a new system." Oh, sure, it may sound like a Ron Popeil infomercial, but actually it's just a few new steps in the Mac OS X setup assistant-- you know, that thing that pops up the first time you boot a new Mac and asks for your name, time zone, choice of soup or salad, etc. Too good to be true? Not at all! According to Apple, it's now simple to "effortlessly move user accounts, system preferences, documents and applications from an old Mac to a new Power Mac G5-- and the transfer is FireWire fast."

Normally, that description alone would easily be worth $50, but wait-- there's more! MacFixIt has additional details, including actual blurry photos of the feature in action, and the elegance behind the concept is inspired. In a nutshell, the setup assistant steps you through hooking up your old Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode, which just turns it into one big FireWire disk as far as the new G5 is concerned. (If you've never used FireWire Target Disk Mode, you're missing out-- it's better than pizza. Well, at least as far as transferring files is concerned.) Once that's done, the setup assistant asks you what you want to copy across-- any or all user accounts, the main Applications folder, your old network settings, and apparently any other non-System "files and folders" scattered around on the hard disk. Then you just click and wait. Go have a bagel or something.

When you come back, all your precious stuff has been happily copied into the appropriate places on your new G5-- no muss, no fuss. If this sounds like a little thing to you, then you probably haven't tried moving your files from one Mac OS X system to another yet-- if you're doing it freestyle, things can get pretty hairy. The prospect of being able to plug in one connecting cable, click a button, and then launch right into working on the new Mac without worrying about what files go where and setting permissions and creating new user accounts and all the rest... well, technically it's not that big a deal, but in practice, Apple's new upgrade tool (assuming it works as advertised) is a godsend. And now we've just lost that old "I don't have time to migrate to a new Mac" excuse not to upgrade. Must... protect... credit rating...

By the way, that bagel you'll be eating while you're waiting-- why not slice it with the Ronco Bagel Cutter? Just to preserve the spirit of the moment and all.

Oh, wait, here's a beef with the G5 upgrades: where the heck are the new displays to match?! Not that we have anything against the displays as displays; they're marvellous all 'round. But c'mon, folks, this is really starting to get ridiculous; the G5s were first unveiled nearly a year ago, they started shipping last August, and the "Mirrored Drive Door" Power Mac G4 has ever since been relegated to an unadvertised, semi-official bottom-of-the-page product that was only still offered for the poor slobs who, for whatever reason, couldn't yet leave Mac OS 9 behind. So why haven't Apple's displays adopted the same minimalist aluminum look that Apple's other professional hardware uses?

And it gets even worse; now even the Power Mac G4 has been discontinued, which means that once inventory runs out, Apple won't sell any Mac that matches the clear-lucite-translucent-pinstripes-'n'-chrome look of the current displays. It just seems a little... well, contrary, we suppose. And it doesn't help that we've been hearing rumors of imminent aluminum displays for even longer than we'd been hearing about imminent G5 speed bumps-- and that's saying something.

Well, thanks to the watchful eyes of faithful viewer Vertti Koskinen, we can now toss another "any day now" display rumor to the pile-- but this one's from Think Secret, who gave us a G5 rumor that actually came to pass, so you might want to look upon this report more favorably than most. According to Think Secret, Apple is "on the verge" of introducing a "totally redesigned family" of displays that sound pretty stunning; the smallest will be 20 inches diagonally, with a 23-inch hitting the mid-range, and a whopping 30-incher (with a 2560 x 1600 resolution) taking over the top of the line. Pixels to spare.

On top of that, Apple is adding a couple of FireWire ports alongside the existing USB ones, and is reportedly nixing its proprietary ADC connector. That latter point is sort of a bummer, since we have to admit that it's nice getting video, USB, and power all through a single slim cable. Still, while switching to the industry standard DVI may escalate cable clutter (and introduce a separate power supply described as "one big honkin' block"-- 150 watts for the 30-inch model?! Yikes), at least making the switch might let Apple sell some pricey displays to the Wintel crowd, as well as to PowerBook owners who don't want to shell out for an expensive adapter.

Of course, that's all secondary to what's really important: what these long-awaited displays will look like, because we're firmly convinced that Apple's low Power Mac sales have nothing to do with the longstanding rumors of faster models, or Steve's promise of 3 GHz by summer, or missing apps for Mac OS X or anything like that; the lack of sales is directly attributable to pros who just can't bear to drop four or five grand on a computer and display that don't even match. (Trust us, those graphics pros are picky about stuff like that.) Well, good news; Think Secret confirms that, yes, the new displays "will have an aluminum, brushed metal look," and the structural design looks pretty spiffy, too-- check out the artist's renderings to see if you can picture one of these on your desk next to a G5. Frankly, we're having a hard time trying not to.

So-- when when when? Think Secret isn't committing to an exact date, but mentions that "it is expected the new displays will be released before the Worldwide Developers Conference, scheduled for June 28." Given that Apple's "Brilliant Savings" rebate offer ends just two days before then, that sounds like a good bet. Here's hoping. Because really, who mixes spots and stripes?