If we had to isolate one single recent development in the PC world that's caused more steam to issue forth from Mac users' ears than any other, it's the unveiling of Future Power's new E-Power iMac knockoff. Unless you've been repeatedly watching your tape of "Pirates of Silicon Valley" non-stop for the past week, you've heard about this thing; it's a cheapo PC stuffed into a case that looks like an iMac. (Actually, it looks like an iMac after the "designers" at Compaq made some bulgy uglifications and left it in a hot car to melt slightly.) Now, the reasons for all the outrage are various and sundry: some of us are indignant that something as beautiful as the iMac has been reworked into something so incredibly devoid of soul; others are affronted by the sheer gall of a company making such an obvious play to ride on Apple's coattails of success-- especially since they try to claim credit for such amazingly original ideas as five differently-colored cases in their press release. And still others are worried that, yes, the E-Power could well steal customers who would otherwise buy an iMac.

How's that? Well, as a NoBeige article points out, in a side-by-side feature set comparison, the E-Power has the numbers; it's got a chip with a higher clock speed, twice the RAM, a slightly larger hard drive, better video, a faster CD-ROM drive, and a PCI slot and built-in floppy-- yet it costs $400 less than an iMac. Price-conscious consumers, if you had to choose based purely on those numbers, which would you buy? And if you feel that in a side-by-side in-store test drive good taste will prevail, we beg to differ-- the average consumer's taste is abysmal. (Two words: Britney Spears. 'Nuff said.) Besides, if good taste were really a deciding factor in computer sales, Windows wouldn't be on some 90% of the systems out there. It would take a whole heck of a lot of taste to overcome a $400 price differential for the average buyer.

So why aren't we at AtAT particularly worried? Well, first of all, there's the fact that the E-Power doesn't exist yet. They won't be available until "later this summer," and it's entirely possible that they'll take even longer than that to surface. Secondly, the E-Power feature set is "subject to change," and we imagine that the price is, too. There's a chance that once the thing really ships, it won't have nearly the price-per-features edge over the iMac that it has now. Thirdly, there's the little matter of Apple's legal department pitbulls, who are probably licking their chops right now over such a tasty cut-and-dried case of trade dress infringement-- meaning, the E-Power may never ship at all without some drastic changes made to its rip-off chassis. And lastly, by the time the E-Power does ship, the iMac may well sport a much improved feature set and/or lower price, making the difference less of an issue. About the only thing that we are worried about is the possibility that Apple's traditional "head in the sand" attitude about potential competition makes an untimely return-- because if they don't do something to fend off the E-Power, they may be very sorry.