Well, we certainly had an Apple sort of evening while planted in front of the TV last night. Let's see... Sharon was playing with a Blueberry iBook on Two Guys and a Girl, Mimi's upgraded her original Bondi Blue iMac to a Grape one on The Drew Carey Show, and the Tangerine iBook made a brief but clearly visible reappearance on Get Real. Then, of course, there were the Power Mac G4 and iBook commercials popping up all evening. You may not be able to find the products on store shelves, but you can sure drool over their flickering images on your TV. Ahhhh, a new fall season loaded with new Apple gear. It doesn't get any better than this.

Well, it could get a little better. Motorola could shift into high gear and get Apple enough processors to fulfill G4 demand. And while Steve Jobs claimed iBooks were shipping last Wednesday, even the people who placed the earliest pre-orders still haven't gotten them (though we've gotten numerous reports that the first ones may reach their owners as early as Thursday). While there are worse problems for a company to have than demand far outstripping supply, we just can't suppress that feeling of déjà vu; doesn't it seem like Apple's always having trouble building cool gear fast enough to keep the shelves stocked? There have been extreme cases, like the original Wall Street Powerbook G3, and milder cases, such as the three-week delay in getting the new "bronze" Powerbooks into the hands of customers. The G4 wasn't exactly "shipping now," as Steve had said, even if the delay is Motorola's fault. In fact, the iBook looks like the only new product since last year's iMac that's actually going to ship on time; back in July, we were told "end of September," and that looks pretty accurate.

On the other hand, just because the first iBooks are going to hit the shelves before the end of the month doesn't mean that you'll actually be able to run out and buy one. With 160,000 pre-orders to work through, even under ideal manufacturing conditions it would have taken a few weeks to work through the backlog and get a decent number of iBooks into the channel. And, of course, the manufacturing conditions are far from ideal right now; a MacWEEK article indicates that delays in iBook productions are "likely" due to the recent earthquake that rocked Taiwan, home of iBook manufacturers Alpha Top. While we now have official Apple word that Alpha Top's manufacturing plant suffered "no significant damage," you can bet that nation-wide power outages, completely jammed communications systems (it took us two days to contact our family members there, who are fine), and far more pressing concerns than cranking out orange and blue laptops are going to affect the iBook supply for a while. But just be thankful that an extra few weeks waiting for your iBook is all you have to worry about due to the quake. So calm down and watch TV.