Speaking of those missing six-slot systems, the debate continues to rage over whether or not Apple's making the right decision in shipping and planning professional-level Macs with three PCI slots-- four, tops. There are basically two schools of thought on the subject: the first contends that Apple's doing the right thing, since only a very tiny minority of the Mac community needs more than three slots, so why should Apple spend the money designing and supporting two different motherboards, or why should the bulk of its customers pay for slots that they will never use? The other (more vocal) opinion is that the "tiny majority" that needs more slots is incredibly important to Apple's future, and alienating them is suicidal, at best. This debate's been flaming for longer than the "where's the floppy in the iMac?" argument.

Now, we'd have to guess that by far the most vocal critics of Apple's three-slot choice are Don Crabb and Robert Morgan (of Apple Recon fame). Crabb is still flaming strong on the issue-- he's in rare form in his recent tirade over at MacCentral. But what's this? Morgan seems to have changed his tune. In a recent RFI Report, he publicly admits that he was wrong about the slots. Apparently after talking to someone "in the know," he now "gets it" and understands Apple's strategy for keeping the content creation pros happy with only three slots. What he won't say is exactly what that strategy is (though he says he's not talking about the PCI expansion chassis), but there are a few hints here and there that the PCI slots are only provided for "legacy" cards, implying that there's a whole new method of expansion awaiting Mac users. Hmmm.

Apparently we'll just have to wait and see what comes out of Apple's labs. As for where we at AtAT stand on the whole issue, well, we don't have terribly strong feelings one way or the other. But we will say this: as members of the "content creating" Mac community, our PowerTower Pro has only one of its six slots currently in use-- and that's for a video card. Granted, that video card also does basic video capture and export, but still, we've got five slots sitting vacant, since our "content" is typically 2D and 3D graphics and a little low-end sound and video, none of which require lots of special cards. So even though we admit there's a definite need for more expandable Macs, we hope Apple finds a way to satisfy that crowd without inundating the rest of us with slots we don't need. Morgan's not talking, but the very fact that he's publicly apologizing for attacking Apple on the slots issue indicates that Apple's got something pretty cool in the works. As for what it is, your guess is as good as ours.