Well, it's been over twenty-four hours since the new Power Macs went public, and we haven't heard any real complaints other than a smattering of the "these aren't 3 GHz so Steve owes me a free one" comments that any reasonable person would expect in a situation like this. That's good news, because it's not all too uncommon for everyone to be so thrilled and giddy when the product is announced that it takes them a day or so of poring over the posted specs with a fine-toothed comb and an electron scanning microscope before they notice something unpleasant that dampens their enthusiasm. (We happily recall when, about six hours after Steve unveiled the original iMac to hoots, hollers, and mass fainting, a collective question arose from all Mac users as one: "Wait... did he mention anything about a floppy drive?...")

So in part because this is "just" a speed bump, there aren't many changes in the new Power Macs with which the fans can find fault-- but at least one new feature is responsible for a few smiles today. Faithful viewer Nicolas Grison was the first to alert us to an intriguing new blurb on the Power Mac home page, promising a "truly hassle-free upgrade... without days of downtime configuring a new system." Oh, sure, it may sound like a Ron Popeil infomercial, but actually it's just a few new steps in the Mac OS X setup assistant-- you know, that thing that pops up the first time you boot a new Mac and asks for your name, time zone, choice of soup or salad, etc. Too good to be true? Not at all! According to Apple, it's now simple to "effortlessly move user accounts, system preferences, documents and applications from an old Mac to a new Power Mac G5-- and the transfer is FireWire fast."

Normally, that description alone would easily be worth $50, but wait-- there's more! MacFixIt has additional details, including actual blurry photos of the feature in action, and the elegance behind the concept is inspired. In a nutshell, the setup assistant steps you through hooking up your old Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode, which just turns it into one big FireWire disk as far as the new G5 is concerned. (If you've never used FireWire Target Disk Mode, you're missing out-- it's better than pizza. Well, at least as far as transferring files is concerned.) Once that's done, the setup assistant asks you what you want to copy across-- any or all user accounts, the main Applications folder, your old network settings, and apparently any other non-System "files and folders" scattered around on the hard disk. Then you just click and wait. Go have a bagel or something.

When you come back, all your precious stuff has been happily copied into the appropriate places on your new G5-- no muss, no fuss. If this sounds like a little thing to you, then you probably haven't tried moving your files from one Mac OS X system to another yet-- if you're doing it freestyle, things can get pretty hairy. The prospect of being able to plug in one connecting cable, click a button, and then launch right into working on the new Mac without worrying about what files go where and setting permissions and creating new user accounts and all the rest... well, technically it's not that big a deal, but in practice, Apple's new upgrade tool (assuming it works as advertised) is a godsend. And now we've just lost that old "I don't have time to migrate to a new Mac" excuse not to upgrade. Must... protect... credit rating...

By the way, that bagel you'll be eating while you're waiting-- why not slice it with the Ronco Bagel Cutter? Just to preserve the spirit of the moment and all.