Now that PowerBook development has been merged into the same group working on Power Mac desktop systems, we have no idea what's going to happen to all the projects in the pipeline. Our first instinct was to expect further delays from both product lines as both groups adjust to the new situation, but after thinking about it for a while, it sounds like the desktop folks shouldn't be affected much at all-- and given how late stuff generally seems to be coming out of the portable division, we have to hope that the situation will only improve under new management. So, without further ado, in classical Impatient Mac Fan™ fashion, it's time to stop drooling over the new "bronze" G3 PowerBooks that have just started shipping-- and time to start drooling over the next professional laptops that Apple's little elves are hammering out for release sometime in the distant future.

Mac OS Rumors has the early specs on these little wonders, and while it's so early in the development cycle that any or all of the listed features may well change in the year or so before the products actually ship, there's still a lot to chew on: faster buses, faster processors, better graphics-- all the stuff you'd expect, really. In addition, Rumors claims Apple's looking into using "light-emitting plastics" for the screens, in the quest for brighter and crisper displays, and polymer batteries to conserve weight while carrying more juice than the current Lithium Ion models. Spiffy stuff. But probably the most significant information in the whole report is that Apple has reportedly finally recognized that users of "professional" PowerBooks often have drastically different needs; to that end, apparently the next PowerBooks to touch down on our humble planet will come in two species: "Business" and "Creative." (We have little doubt that Apple will come up with better names before they ship.)

The Business model will allegedly be the smaller, thinner, and lighter of the two, using a 13" screen, a variation of the RAGE Pro graphics chip, and fast G3 processors. (This is presumably the "Executive PowerBook" that Jobs alluded to at the shareholders' meeting, for businessmen who mostly just need to check email on the road.) The Creative version, on the other hand, is geared more towards the mobile graphics professional who really needs to lug around a full-powered workstation; they'll have larger 14" or 15" screens (perhaps going all the way up to 1280x1024 resolution), RAGE 128 graphics power, and faster G4 processors, in addition to more RAM, larger hard disks, and DVD-ROM as a standard feature. It's about time; while we always liked the idea of simplifying Apple's product line, a "one size fits all" strategy for PowerBooks just didn't seem like all that good an idea. We're counting the days.