Apple officially announced the Power Macintosh All-In-One today (the Mac Formerly Known As Artemis), sooner than we had expected, but later than we had originally hoped. The good news is, pretty much all of the rumors about its specs have proven true: it's got a 233 or 266 MHz G3 chip (a full 750 with 512 KB backside cache, not the cacheless 740 model); it's got an integrated 15-inch monitor capable of displaying 1024x768 resolution; and it'll ship standard with 32 MB of RAM, a 24x CD-ROM drive, and a 4 GB (not 2 GB) hard drive. You can read more about it in Apple's press release, and MacCentral's Dennis Sellers has a truly excellent profile of this cheery new addition to the Mac product line.

Yes, the AIO looks like a real winner, and in fact we've only got two gripes about it, and neither of them is a particularly fair criticism. First of all, it's currently only available through educational sales channels, which leaves your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff out in the cold, staring through the shop window and drooling into the snow. But the schools deserve first crack at this kick-butt configuration, and in fact, it was designed expressly for educational use-- little features like safety-conscious rounded corners and dual front-mounted headphone jacks (so two students can share one Mac) make this plainly obvious. Nice to see that when Steve announced Apple's intention to focus on the educational market, he wasn't just blowing smoke.

The other gripe is simply the price. Interestingly, Apple included no price information in their press information about the AIO, as if to try and draw attention away from the fact that it's not the sub-$1000 system everyone's been waiting for. A Newsbytes article quotes an Apple spokesperson as saying that the AIO is a $1499 system, though. And while that's a great price for a complete system that'll beat out a 300 MHz Pentium II, we've got to wonder about schools who'll have to choose between the $1499 AIO and a $899 complete Pentium-class Wintel system, for instance. Here's hoping that the superior design of the AIO and Apple's long-standing commitment to the education market tips the scales in Apple's favor.

Or, there's also the possibility posted by Mac OS Rumors that the AIO will include a sub-$1000 configuration after all. Recall, if you will, that Apple's currently working on the educational version of its online build-to-order Apple Store. If you've visited the Store's current incarnation (and if you haven't, where on earth is your spirit of adventure?) you know that for any build-to-order product, the shopper is first presented with a preconfigured choice between Good, Better, and Best configurations. The Good system is typically a stripped-down base model. For folks with a little more cash on hand, the Better config provides some happy little plusses like extra RAM and a faster processor. And the Best config typically includes all the bells and whistles imaginable and costs more than the national defense budget for many small-to-middling countries.

Now, let's blithely assume that Rumors' sources in the educational channel are telling the truth when they say that Apple's continuing the Good/Better/Best model in the forthcoming Apple Store for Education. According to Rumors, the Best option for educational buyers will be a standard G3 desktop and monitor bundle, probably running at over $2000. The Better option will be a $1300-$1500 AIO model. And the bargain-basement Good? That configuration is currently on hold, "pending an announcement... in April or May," which is expected to bring news of a G3-based system hitting the long-sought-after $1000 price point.

Could it be a Mac NC? Possibly, but given that the announcement is expected no later than two months from now, it's very unlikely. The best bet is a stripped-down AIO, perhaps running a cacheless 740 chip at a relatively slow clock speed, with a smaller hard disk and without the video extras in the current models. Still, it's hard to imagine what Apple could pull out of the existing AIO to drop the price another $400. Guess we'll all have to wait and see.

So much for rumors about Apple buying Global Village-- turns out Boca bought them instead. For a measly $10 mil, Boca gets all of Global Village's modem business, including the brand name and logo. Details are in a Reuters story.

After the transfer of its modem business to Boca, the Company Formerly Known As Global Village will re-emerge with a new name and a new stock ticker symbol, at which point they'll leap feet first into marketing their new product: a communications server designed for small businesses which provides fax, internet, and remote access services. (Sounds like the OneWorld to us...)

AtAT numbers two Global Village modems among its pool of equipment, and they've always performed well. We hope that Boca continues the tradition of providing excellent Mac software like GlobalFax, and that they don't just turn Global Village into a Wintel-only business. Given that the price tag was only $10 million, we're both surprised and a little dismayed that Apple didn't buy the modem business to ensure a tight integration of the communications services in its own computers. Sounds like it could have been a nice set-up.