New Apple Hardware, last of the PPC?

Man, Apple is just pumping out the product releases these days. In less than a month's time, they have updated all their hardware categories save for the iBook line. It's kind of a shame for the "Power" lines, a lot of people are waiting for the Intel Macs, yet these are some amazing machines. Here's my quicktake:

PowerMac

• Dual, Dual Core G5s are damn nice, even though the clock speed is down, I don't think it will matter. This is a fast mac. What other desktop machine does 76 gflops?


• PCI Express: Well, PCI-X didn't last long. Express kicks its ass. Although the big news here is the next item...


• 16 Lane PCI Express slot: Now every G5 will support a 30 inch Cinema display without upgrading the graphics card. And all the graphics cards have dual DVI output for dual displays (sub-30")


• 533mhz DDR2 memory: Now here is where they are playing catch up, its about time. Nice that it can go up to 16 gigs now

PowerBooks

• More Pixels: Finally, they expand the workspace on the 15" and 17", making the 15" a good desktop replacement for most, and the 17" a pretty good graphics/video desktop replacement.


• Expanded battery life is never unwelcome.


• Optical Audio connections: Nice these made it over from the G5, I've been saying for YEARS that all macs should have optical audio in/out


• Dual-Layer DVD burning is another welcome feature from the desktop line. This makes the 17" even better for an in-the-field video workstation.


• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR means that you can sync your newer phones and PDA's faster, and it SHOULD mean that you can use the new stereo Bluetooth headphones, but I don't know if that will happen. I have a D-Link Bluetooth adapter on my desktop mac and I was slightly bummed to discover that it does NOT work with headsets, so I'm back to wired headsets with games.

Now, with all these advancements to the 15" and 17" PowerBooks, the lowly 12" is getting even lowlier. It's STILL running a 1024x768 screen, it doesn't have the Dual-layer DVD burner, OR the optical audio connections, OR a firewire 800 port, OR gigabit ethernet, OR DDR2 memory, OR ANY upgrades over the previous model. In fact, I think its the same model, they only updated the 15" and the 17". Anyone in the market for the 12" previous should closely compare it to the 12" iBook and see if they can save a few hundred bucks on features they don't need.

Me, I was thinking about a previous earlier in the year, but once the Intel announcement was made, I decided to wait, and I haven't really needed it enough to justify the cost...yet. We'll see if Jobs & Co. hint at a timeline on Intel-based PowerBooks in the near future and I'll decide then.