Wow! What a week for my favorite computer company. As I reported last week, Apple opened the iTunes Music Store to Windows 2000 and XP users through the release of iTunes for Windows, a free download from HYPERLINK "http://www.apple.com" www.apple.com. Well, in the first three and a half days after the launch, Windows users downloaded over a million copies of the iTunes software, and purchased over a million songs from the iTunes Music Store. This is a great start, considering that when the Store opened last April to a Mac-only audience, it took a full week to get to a million song sales. Now, there have been some Windows users reporting problems with their systems after installing iTunes (mostly issues with Windows 2000). But, I guess it wouldn’t be real Windows software unless it caused a few systems to seize up. But, I digress…

This Wednesday, out of the blue with no advance warning, Apple announced a major change to its low-end laptop, the iBook. The iBook, until this week, used the G3 processor, rather than the newer, more powerful G4, used in other Apple laptops. Not any more. Now the base 12-inch model goes to an 800Mhz G4 and 30GB hard drive. The 14-inch model can be had with either a 933Mhz or 1GHz G4 processor, with a 40 or 60GB hard drive. Also new across the line is the addition of USB 2.0 ports, the ability to use Apple’s Airport Extreme wireless networking cards, and the upgrade to the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics card with 32MB of DDR SDRAM. The 12-inch model is $1099, with the 14-inch models at $1299 for the 933Mhz version and $1499 for the 1GHz machine.

Apple also dropped prices and added features on its entry-level desktop, the eMac. The base eMac with a Combo drive (CD-R/W, DVD-R) is only $799, while the model with the CD and DVD burning SuperDrive falls to $1099.

Tonight is the “Night of the Panther”, the official release of the next major upgrade to Mac OS X, version 10.3. Let me tell you, I’ve hung with this cat, and it’s the sweetest Mac experience yet. If you have an older Mac (built-in USB is required), Panther will make it run faster. If you have a newer Mac, it’ll be even better. Next week I’ll cover Panther in more detail. But, why wait for me? Go get it yourself. You’ll be purring, I guarantee.

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski