Undeniably, the Apple Expo in Paris has been suffering a few setbacks. Between the planned Stevenote protest and a Paris taxi strike threatening to make transportation a nightmare, we thought the Apple Expo's prospects for success looked dim last week. Then, on the night before the show opened, faithful viewer Milo Auckerman wrote to let us know that half the Expo floor had been flooded with two inches of water due to a "sprinkler malfunction." And MacNN reports that some 500 attendees who had pre-registered for a seat in the keynote address were turned away at the door due to overbooking-- without so much as an "Oops! We goofed! Here, have a t-shirt."

All of this might make people think that Apple Expo doesn't stand much of a chance of becoming as "important" as the Macworld Expo events here in the States, despite Apple's stated intentions. That's why we were so relieved to hear that the Stevenote itself preserved the most important and long-standing tradition from here in the U.S.-- namely, the complete and utter lack of a new PowerBook, rumors notwithstanding. It's nice to see that some things never change. Some things, however, change pretty drastically-- like the PowerBook's flashy little brother, the iBook.

Yes, Apple's consumer portable is all grown up; in addition to getting a speed boost to 366 MHz, increasing its disk size to a healthy 10 GB, and finally joining the FireWire generation, the entry-level iBook sheds $100 off its list price and dons a couple of new colors. Gone is the juvenile Blueberry, to be replaced by the more adult Indigo we all know and love from the recent iMac revision. But if you'd rather go the eye-catching (or eye-hurting) route, fear not-- fruit is back, baby. Tangerine has been replaced by a vibrant new green that Apple calls Key Lime. A word of warning: don those sunglasses before you check it out.

For those of you who want the biggest and best, the iBook Special Edition just got a serious steroid injection as well. The new model retains its $1799 price tag, but sports a blistering 466 MHz G3 and the long-sought-after DVD-ROM drive. It's available both in standard Graphite and the new what-were-they-thinking Key Lime. All told, we figure that between the Mac OS X public beta release, the new iBooks, and the nonexistent PowerBook announcement, Apple Expo Europe has clearly joined the ranks of the Macworld Expo shows as a first-class Mac show.