SuperDrives for everyone! Wow, it's hard to believe that it was only about fifteen months ago that Apple unleashed its DVD-burning wonder upon an eager world-- and that it was only available in one system, the top-of-the-line $3499 Power Mac. Ouch. But as of two months ago, the landscape had shifted pretty drastically; not only was the SuperDrive standard equipment in two out of three new Power Mac configurations, but it was also built into the high-end flat-panel iMac.

There's a bit of a price gap, though. Whereas well-to-do consumers could jump into DVD creation for only $1799 (well, $1899 after Steve's "adjustment"), pros needed to shell out $2299 for the cheapest SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac. That's a whole lot better than the $3499 from a year ago, but it's still several hundred bucks more than the consumer offering, and for viewing purposes, the iMac comes with a 15-inch LCD display, whereas the Power Mac comes with, um, a port. But faithful viewer Smitty informs us that Apple's evening up the score a little, and thankfully not by hiking the iMac's price again; if you wander over to the Apple Store, you'll notice a nifty little link in the sidebar announcing that the SuperDrive is "now available on all Power Mac G4s."

It's true! Toss a $1599 entry-level 800 MHz Power Mac in your virtual cart and mess with its build-to-order options; you'll find that you can upgrade it from its stock CD-RW drive to a SuperDrive for a mere two hundred clams. Which means, of course, that the cheapest SuperDrive-equipped Power Mac is now available for $1799-- a hundred bucks cheaper than the top-of-the-line iMac. Oh, sure, you still need a display for that Power Mac, but the prices are a little more comparable now, plus you get all that expandability. Most importantly, it's just one more way for Apple to get those SuperDrives out there among the populace. There's definitely some sort of secret world-domination thing going on here, and we strongly suspect that once Apple has a million functional SuperDrives dotted all over the planet, they're all going to act as Reality Distortion Field repeaters in a vast global network of pure Steve-quality will-bending energy. Or something like that.

All that's left, of course, is for Apple to work out some way to cram a slot-loading SuperDrive into a PowerBook so that people can unwittingly carry these RDF repeaters on buses, trains, planes, and other places where desktop systems aren't likely to be found, so that even commuters won't be spared the effects of Steve's will. Patience, folks; as certain entities have hinted previously, that sort of thing might be only an Expo away. And sure, we'll eventually all be mindless slaves to the Mothership, but at least we'll be burning DVDs. And hey, we're Mac users-- aren't we at least halfway there already?