Apple's Summer User Group Road Tour has gotten off the ground (despite the fact that summer doesn't officially start for another month yet) with a presentation at Washington Apple Pi. There's a great write-up of the event over at Macs Only!, which paints a picture of excitement, optimism, and jubilation that stands in stark contrast to the mood surrounding Apple users a year ago. Everyone loves the iMac, everyone loves the PowerBook G3's, everyone loves the Apple Studio Display. It's just a big ol' love fest all around.

Here's the thing that steps on our buzz, though-- Apple isn't actually making light-up computers. First we'd heard that the white Apple logo on the lid of the new PowerBook G3's glowed when the laptop was on, and we discovered first-hand that it wasn't true. Then, in this account of the meeting at Washington Apple Pi, the light-up mouse on the iMac was shot down; the Apple representatives "squelched the rumor that [the mouse] lights up when moved." (No word on the rumor that the whole iMac glows translucently when it's operational, but we're skeptical of that feature now.) Yeah, I know, you think it's stupid for us to focus on such a tiny and seemingly insignificant detail, but it was such a distinctive feature that could really differentiate Apple's products from everyone else's-- even to people who know nothing about computers, except that they should buy one.

Not to mention that the public at large will always forgive "bigger" problems with a product when said product possesses a useless but snazzy feature that can create the "gee whiz" effect. As in, "Yeah, I know the iMac doesn't have a floppy drive, but gee whiz, I bought one anyway because it lights up!" Apple would do well to plug into this enormous advantage; after all, you just know there are going to be plenty of people saying similarly odd things like, "Yeah, I know Windows 98 slows my system down by 23%, but gee whiz, I bought it anyway because it's got a 98 in its name!"

Speaking of those "bigger" problems with the iMac, it'll be interesting to see if Apple will address any of them at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next week-- and if so, how. E3, some of you may know, is the largest show for video and computer games and related fun stuff; Apple, and Apple products, haven't had much of a presence at the show in recent years, much to the chagrin of those of us who know that the real key to expanding a platform into the consumer market is to get some serious game support on that platform. So while we're thrilled to read at MacCentral that Apple's planning on taking the wraps off the iMac-- and its gaming plans for the Mac platform in the consumer space-- at next week's show, there are questions about the iMac that we're not sure Apple can answer. At least, not acceptably.

Granted, the iMac stands poised to make a huge push into the home market this fall; in fact, we're hard-pressed to think of any Mac that's had such consumer appeal in the history of the platform. It's cheap. It's pretty. It's definitely fast enough to run just about any of today's games at terrific speeds. Its USB ports guarantee that a wide range of joysticks and other gaming devices will be available. And Apple is planning on bundling several games with the iMac to sweeten the deal. That's all well and good. In fact, that's all great, and should help retain the programmers already making Mac games, while persuading a few PC-only game development houses to reconsider doing Mac versions of their software.

But there's a fairly serious problem with the iMac when it comes to games: it doesn't have any PCI slots. That means that you can't stick in a 3D accelerator, like a Power3D running a 3Dfx VooDoo chip, which makes games like Myth and Quake run faster and look about a gazillion times better. As for the 3D acceleration that is built into the iMac, well, it's substandard, to say the least-- most games will probably run faster in software rendering on the iMac's speedy G3 chip. But these days, serious gamers require something better, like a VooDoo, or at least a Rage Pro chipset (which is now built into all other G3 Powermacs). Don't get us wrong-- the iMac rocks, and we fully plan to buy one. But again, here we are looking at the dark patch through the silver lining. Hey, we don't mean to be downers, but these are our real concerns, you know?

Hey, it's just an iMac kinda day, hmmm? More on the new consumer Mac's expandability, or lack thereof: there's one feature that we haven't seen mentioned in any of the lists of the iMac's specs. According to Mac the Knife, the iMac will have a "proprietary expansion slot," for which Apple is reportedly considering building a FireWire card. (The USB ports are dandy for most expansion uses, but they aren't quite speedy enough for connecting fast hard drives or things like that.)

Hmmm, an iMac expansion slot fast enough for FireWire? That's an interesting possibility. While we would consider it incredibly unlikely that anyone would actually create, say, 3D accelerator cards that will only work in the iMac, it's not inconceivable for someone to make a PCI expansion chassis that would plug into this proprietary slot. That clears the path for iMac owners who might want to buy a video capture card, or anything like that. Could be neat.

By the way, the Knife says that whether or not the FireWire card gets released depends on whether more FireWire peripherals become available. Our personal take on the whole thing is that Apple's isn't considering FireWire for the iMac at all-- such a high-speed and professional-level interface doesn't seem to fit in with the iMac's consumer market roots. Still, we like the idea of this rumored iMac expansion slot: it may be proprietary, but it's something.