And once again the rumor mill comes through with the goods; mere hours after we'd mentioned the buzz that Apple was about to disgorge a trio of revamped iBooks and a new low-cost Power Mac config for the ravenous consumption of the credit-abusing masses, faithful viewer John Maton was first to inform us that all four machines touched down exactly as predicted on Tuesday morning. One Apple press release details how digital lifestyle mavens on the go can now snag faster iBooks with AirPort Extreme built-in for less than a grand; another touts the appearance of a $1,499 single-processor 1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 for sedentary power users on a budget. As far as this particular batch of releases is concerned, the grapevine was batting a thousand.

Unfortunately for us, though, earlier rumors of an imminent PowerBook update turned out to be six shades of bogus with a side order of wrong-- and not just as far as the Tuesday updates, you understand; we're talking wrong through January at least, because apparently that's the absolutely earliest we'll see new pro portables on Apple's menu. See, Apple has a strict policy never to discuss unannounced products-- unless, of course, it's talking through MacCentral, the company's unofficially official third-party leak straight to the Mac Faithful. Whenever Apple needs to keep its user base's product expectations in check, it simply makes a few strategically-placed comments to MacCentral, and voilà: we're no longer expecting 3.0 GHz G5s, PowerBook G5s, or iMac G5s with our customary zeal. And this time the message is "no new PowerBooks until next year."

Yes, apparently David Moody, Apple's veep of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing, conveniently commented to MacCentral that "this new line-up of iBooks, along with the current PowerBooks we have will make up the complete portable line-up we will be offering for the holidays." In other words, if you're in the market for a new PowerBook but were holding off because the current line-up is due for a freshening up, you might as well blow the cash now, because PowerBooks won't be getting a boost until New Year's at least.

True, Apple's comments to MacCentral haven't always been totally straight with the public, like when Tom Boger's "no iMac G5"-themed comments came just six weeks before that product was unveiled but while iMac G4 sales were apparently in the toilet. (Gee, how convenient.) But you have to remember, Boger never flat-out said that an iMac G5 was way off in the future; he merely implied it by saying that a PowerBook G5 wouldn't surface in 2004 and that "it's the same story" with trying to squeeze a G5 into an iMac, which "would be a heck of a challenge." Sneaky? Sure, but not technically untrue. But there's a lot less wiggle room when an Apple rep comes right out and says that the "current PowerBooks we have" will be in the portable line-up through the holidays; if someone goes out and buys a PowerBook now and Apple winds up shipping newer models in three weeks anyway, rest assured that there'll be violence done.

So apparently we here at AtAT have a decision to make: we can try to squeeze a few more months out of our Pismo by spending some dough on a new battery, or we can buy one of the new iBooks, or we can buy a current PowerBook knowing full well that faster, cheaper models will probably surface in January. We know, we know-- none of the three options is exactly a fate worse than death, so it seems ungrateful to complain, but we look at it this way: if Apple isn't going to ship us a truckload of free Macs every three weeks like we so obviously deserve, then the very least it can do is psychically schedule its product intros around our own wants and needs. Is that really so much to ask?

Say, buddy, can you spare a couple of bucks? We could use an extra gigabyte of storage right about now. See, the rumor mill may have left us with no surprises as far as the new iBooks and Power Mac are concerned, but Apple did manage to squeeze one newly refreshed product in under anyone's radar: according to a company press release, Apple's Xserve RAID storage system now packs up to 5.6 terabytes of storage into its same semi-svelte three rack units of space-- and all for a price that, according to Apple, represents "the industry's most aggressive price for storage of just over $2 per GB." (It's actually $2.32 per gig, not including sales tax, but who's counting?)

Now, it's no secret that Apple is looking to make inroads into enterprise sales, and the Xserve product line is its best hope of getting its foot in the door, so we're a little surprised that Apple's press release didn't express the Xserve RAID's new storage capacity in terms more familiar to the beige IT set. Just in case any of those guys accidentally happened to tune in, here's the skinny: 5.6 terabytes is just shy of four million floppies. You're welcome.

Ha! We kid! Even the beigest IT dinosaurs aren't using floppies for anything these days but sneakernet driver installations and evening out the short leg on the coffee table, and they certainly aren't building big honkin' RAID arrays out of them. (Incidentally, Windows wouldn't let them even if they wanted to-- but Mac OS X would.) And while most IT management types we've met have an anti-Apple streak even wider than our own anti-Microsoft one (and believe us when we tell you that's saying something), their psychological need to minimize upfront expenditures is so deeply ingrained that they might be able to look right past the Xserve RAID's Apple logo and its non-ugly-as-sin design to focus in on what really is a darn attractive price for no-hassle Fibre Channel network storage. Plus it's more buzzword-compliant than ever, complete with Cisco and SUSE Linux certification-- and shipping is free.

So what does all this mean to you if you're not an IT professional, but rather just a typical Mac user without any particular interest in enterprise storage solutions? Well, aside from comparing the price of a gigabyte of Xserve RAID storage to the price you paid for your first 1 GB hard drive in 1996 and wanting to fling yourself out the nearest window, in an immediate sense, not a whole lot-- unless you've got $12,999 burning a hole in your pocket and you're enough of a geek to want to spend it on a top-of-the-line Xserve RAID to fill up with illegally downloaded Hollywood movies and Internet porn instead of, say, a Nissan Sentra. But in a larger sense, if the Xserve RAID really does let Apple wriggle its way into enterprise sales and the company eventually starts selling fleets of 10,000 iMacs to Fortune 500 companies who See the Light™, that means a healthy boost in market share, some serious street cred with the Wall Street suits, and an increasingly ticked-off Michael Dell. Frankly, we don't see a down side.

Stop the big rolly-stampy things! You know, the, uh, printy doohickeys. Presses! Yeah, those. Stop them, because big news is afoot. Do you remember when Amazon started taking preorders for Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) last week? Apple hasn't publicly set a release date any more specific than "the first half of 2005," and that was given by Steve way back in June, so when Amazon listed a ship date of March 31st, Mac fans everywhere wondered if the company had accidentally let slip some juicy inside info, as if Steve Jobs and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos went bowling and Steve had one too many Michelobs or something.

Personally, we were skeptical that there was anything that interesting going on, given that resellers apparently have to provide some tentative ship date for any product for which they want to accept preorders, and Amazon's Tiger date just happened to fall exactly in the middle of the official "first half of 2005" range. But then suddenly Amazon stopped accepting preorders, and the March 31st ship date disappeared; Amazon's Tiger page reported instead that "this item is not stocked or has been discontinued," which we found to be a little odd. The product was obviously "not stocked"; neither are any of the gazillion other items for which Amazon racks up preorders. So why pull the tentative release date?

Well, here's the latest: as MacMinute points out, Amazon's Tiger page is once again accepting preorders-- and the ship date has been updated to "June 30, 2005." So what's the deal? If Amazon was just pulling a tentative ship date out of thin air in the first place, why bother changing it from the middle of Apple's range to the very end-- unless Steve did mention a little something about Tiger development lagging a bit after doing JELL-O shots with "Beer Bong" Bezos?

Okay, so it's all the thinnest of speculation. Still, we found it strange that Amazon would pull its preorder page and then reinstate it with a new ship date three months farther in the future. But even if the dates themselves mean nothing (as they probably do), it is nice to see that Tiger is once again available for preorder, because that makes the product eligible for Amazon's lists and rankings. When last we checked, Tiger's sales rank had dropped to 153, which doesn't sound all that impressive until you remember that this is for preorders of a product with a stated ship date of over eight months from now, so a rank of 153 sounds more than respectable. Furthermore, Tiger is Amazon's "#16 Early Adopter Product in Software"-- which is three notches higher than the Windows XP Professional upgrade. You just gotta love it when a product that ostensibly won't ship for two-thirds of a year ranks higher than its competitor that's available right now. (Yes, we know that XP has a sales rank of 62 and is actually selling better than Tiger. Don't step on our buzz. Jeez.)

By the way, we'd be sorely neglecting our duties as shameless money-grubbing content prostitutes if we didn't mention that, should you be moved to preorder Tiger this far in advance, you can buy it through this Amazon link and we'll get a few bucks when it finally ships. No pressure, though. It's not like anyone's going to call you an ungrateful freeloader or anything. At least, not to your face.