Just where the hairy heck have we been, you ask? Well, since there are only two people still bothering to tune in (Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!), we're not going to be particularly fastidious about the details, but suffice it to say that 2003 is barely 1/12th over and it's already going down as one of the ickier years in recent personal memory. The broad strokes are thus: take three weeks of heinous, life-interrupting travel, add two weeks of blind retching illness, and darned if you don't wind up just a little bit behind-- especially since AtAT production generally requires that we get no more than two or three hours of sleep a night, and that turned out to be a no-no what with the flu recovery and all. So we're still at the mercy of various and sundry lurking non-AtAT-related deadlines (for gigs that actually pay, seeing as the bills are mounting up something fierce) and so you shouldn't by any means interpret this episode-- our first in a fortnight-- as a sign that we're on top of things and back in the saddle. On the contrary: we're so far behind we can actually see our own butts about twenty feet up the road.

Still, something made us break our hibernation and poke our heads out of the cave yesterday morning to see what was shakin' down Cupertino way, which makes us suspect that we may indeed be mildly psychic. Could it have been a mere coincidence that we just happen to have checked in with Apple on the very day that the company unleashed new Power Macs upon an unsuspecting populace? Maybe. And maybe creamed corn will win the Viewers' Choice award in the next "Most Popular Canned Food" contest. We just tend to doubt it, is all.

Now, there is one benefit to our recent virtual hermit life: since we've essentially severed all contact with the outside world, we haven't read a single reaction to the new Power Macs-- which means we know that our own impressions of the new hardware are pure and untainted by outside opinion. So what's our take on the new pro desktops? We think they rate a solid "eh." There's lots of good new stuff in there: FireWire 800, internal Bluetooth support (at least, that's what the press release implies), support for AirPort Extreme, a faster SuperDrive, and nifty new graphics. And a speed boost (to a max of dual 1.42 GHz) plus a price reduction is always welcome. Still, even though we have to fume about how much more we had to shell out for our barely-a-year-old dual 800 MHz G4 (and how much less we got in the box), the truth is, we're surprisingly unlusty when it comes to scoring one of these new beasties.

It's worth mentioning that our lack of enthusiasm here may have a lot to do with a general indifference to anything that isn't directly relevant to the hindquarters of a nine-month-old child ("We may be going to war? Good lord-- what will that do to the price of Huggies?!"), but we suspect we're not the only ones who aren't planning bank heists to raise the capital for an upgrade. Of course, Apple certainly expected that-- this is a minor update to an existing line, hence the low-key intro instead of a big dog-and-pony show at the Expo a few weeks back. As for whether the new Power Macs will finally trigger some spending and get those pro desktop sales numbers inching above "Lackluster" territory, well, that's anyone's guess. Ours is that there won't be many reports of people spraining their clicking fingers in a mad dash to place an order...