It appears that the latest in Apple's long history of availability debacles may be coming to an end. Getting one's hands on a PowerBook G3 Series system with a 14.1" screen has proven to be more difficult than finding a CompUSA without a stocking ladder blocking access to the Mac section. According to MacWEEK, though, the bleeding edge customers who are lined up with their six grand in hand may finally receive their systems shortly-- one Apple dealer in California reports that their first shipment arrived on Wednesday.

Of course, it should be noted that the dealer in question, Elite Computers & Software, is in Cupertino, Apple's back yard. We wouldn't be surprised if Apple just sent a guy down the block to drop off a few when they first came in. Expect it to take an extra couple of days for what few 14.1" PowerBooks remain to travel out further from Apple headquarters. (Elite says they expect more units "by the end of the month," which we interpret to mean "whenever that nice Apple guy brings a few more across the street for us.")

We at AtAT (unsurprisingly) have not yet seen one of the new PowerBooks with the 14.1" screens, but we have spent several hours with some 13.3" models. To be honest, we're not sure how much difference an extra eight-tenths of an inch could possibly make; both systems run at 1024x768 resolution, so users wouldn't gain any screen real-estate from using the larger version, and the 13.3" screen already seemed almost obscenely large for a portable. We're betting that most of the people who wanted the top-of-the-line system were more concerned about getting the superfast 292 MHz G3 processor than they were about having a slightly larger screen. Apple recently came to the same conclusion and reportedly started offering a 13.3"/292 configuration, but not early enough to prevent a swelling of hostility in the ranks. Hopefully, with the trickle of high-end PowerBooks now reaching distributors, Apple can put this craziness behind them and get back to building iMacs; an availability crisis of the cute blue and white lumps come August would be catastrophic.