Heads up-- the SuperDrives are a-comin'! Just as Apple shipped its first PowerBook G4 by the end of January as Steve promised during his last keynote, today the company issued a press release confirming that the first SuperDrive-equipped 733 MHz Power Mac G4 has rolled off the line, been slapped in a box, and is now winging its merry way to some lucky customer somewhere out there in the wild blue yonder. A quick peek at the calendar will confirm that, yes, it's still February-- which means that Steve's "shipping next month" announcement held true. The man's two for two!

However, if you've got a SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac on order from the Apple Store, you might not want to start your anticipatory dance of joy just yet. Take a lesson from the PowerBook customers; the first titanium PowerBooks shipped three weeks ago, but plenty of customers are still waiting for theirs to arrive. Heck, several of them recently got email advising them of a March 3rd ship date, which is still a couple of weeks away. And given that we just have to assume that Motorola can't crank out more than, say, six 733 MHz G4 processors a week (especially after the 4000-job layoff in the semiconductor division, which means that the secretarial temps and the janitorial staff are probably running the plants right now), we imagine that the wait for your DVD-burning tower of power might be a smidge longer.

On the other hand, all good things come to those who wait, so eventually you'll be cranking out your own DVDs at ten bucks a pop-- you can abandon that nagging feeling that this whole iDVD/SuperDrive thing was a big, fat, vaporous hoax. The drives are real, the 733 MHz chip is real, the software is real-- and any minute now, the first few customers are going to be able to confirm those happy facts first-hand. So don the pretentious director's beret, grab your big, cartoony megaphone, and get cracking on that hour-long digital epic; soon you'll be able to slap it onto a DVD and beg your local video store to buy a few copies to rent out. Ah, life in the 21st century; no flying cars yet, but desktop video's at least as good.