Other than the release of 10.3.4, it sure looks like things are pretty darn quiet again today. Yup. Quiet, quiet, quiet. Not much going on at all. You could hear a pin drop. Everything's just really, really... um... quiet.

Well, except for that explosion, of course.

Yes, kiddies, an explosion-- and sure, it's more of a metaphorical explosion than the kind with the bright flash and the loud boom and the raining destruction and horror, but that's actually a good thing, since the latter type is rather more drama than we typically like, to be perfectly honest. Faithful viewer mrmgraphics informed us of a PR blurb at Digital Producer announcing that Digital Media Net is launching "a new cluster of publications targeted specifically toward Macintosh creative professionals," but before you go clearing space on your coffee table for a few more Mac-centric mags, you should be aware that by "publications" DMN means "web sites." Which is a little bit of a downer, because web sites come and go all the time, and we always like to see people with enough guts to sink capital into launching a dead-tree Mac magazine, but hey, the more the merrier, right?

Anyway, the reason why we mention it is because DMN's decision to launch Mac Video Pro, Mac Audio Pro, Mac Design Pro, Mac Animation Pro, and Mac DVD Pro (gee, in times of great peril do they all merge together in mid-air to form a single enormous ultra-site that wields a gigantic sword of righteousness against the hordes of evil? Because that'd be, you know, pretty cool) is because "the creative production market is exploding on the Macintosh platform" right now. And while there may be slightly less risk and capital involved in launching a web site instead of a magazine, it's still a nice show of faith in the future of the Mac and its professional users when some group figures it can make money off the community by unveiling no fewer than five of the suckers at once.

So remember, the next time you're hyperventilating over the Mac's two-ish percent market share, don't forget that those figures include stuff like zillions of PCs sold as cash registers and the like; when it comes to markets in which Apple actually competes, the Mac isn't doing all that poorly. And at least one online publisher thinks that Apple's on enough of an upswing in the creative content market to warrant tossing five more pro Mac web sites out there, so that's one explosion worth making a little noise about.

By the way, if things stay so freakin' quiet around here that we have to keep trying to wring a drop or two of relevant drama from the likes of web site launch announcements all the way up to WWDC, someone had better send us an extra crate of antidepressants, because otherwise we're going to wind up doing something drastic.