Oh, our cup runneth over... as the rest of the professional Mac-using world awaits the arrival of the new pro-level G3 systems to see how many slots it ends up having, we at AtAT are on the edge of our seats due to reports that the new casing and design are so beautiful and cool, they belong in the Museum of Modern Art. This new high-fashion enclosure is apparently code-named "El Capitan," and based on the report on prototype units over at Reality, it sounds like Apple's going for the jugular, style-wise. If the iMac is the cutest computer since the original Macintosh, "El Capitan" is the sexiest.

So what is it about the design that's already got us considering pulling funds out of our IRA's to buy one? It's not so much the smoky midnight-blue translucent plastics themselves, such as those used in the Apple Studio Display. That feature alone we could resist, though it's certainly a gorgeous-sounding sight. No, it's the rumor that current prototypes have the Apple logo and model name printed on the inside of the translucent casing. Reportedly, upon startup, a light inside the box illuminates the whole unit from within, revealing the logo and model name in shadowy silhouette. Holy luciferin, Batman! You'll recall that we're suckers for light-up computers, even though none seem to have ever made it into production.

Now, it's important to note that we've been burned before on this; just before its release, we had been told that the large white Apple logo on the cover of the PowerBook G3 actually glowed visibly when the computer was in use, but have not witnessed the phenomenon with any of the seven such units we've had the honor of using. (Reportedly if you take one of the high-end models with a 14.1" screen into a very dark room and turn up the backlighting all the way, you can just barely make out a faint glow coming from the crystal Apple, but that's about all.) And when the iMac was unveiled last May, it first appeared that the whole translucent unit glowed when it was on. That report turned out to be false, and was probably due to special stage lighting used to enhance the iMac when it was first trotted out. Then it seemed quite clear that the iMac's mouse lit up when in use, and in fact it seems that this was the case in the early prototypes, but Apple removed the feature from the final specification. So overall, Apple engineers seem to like the idea of light-up computers, but such a "frivolous" feature hasn't really made it into a shipping product yet. Here's hoping that the funky internal light/backlit logo and product name gimmick remains in the design for the production "El Capitan" units. We want our light-up computer!