My friend Paul Morley asked what I, as a long-time Mac advocate, thought about Apple’s announcements of yesterday. There’s much to touch on, so I’ll be brief except where something particularly piques my interest. New iMacs: Well, what are you going to do here, anyway? Faster; new colors. I do like that they’ve got an iMovie-capable machine under $1,000 now, and am amused that the new iMac SE does look like those guys who drove AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back, but otherwise — yawn. New Keyboard & Mouse: Both are long overdue, but look like a solid addition to Apple’s hardware lineup. New Monitors: I’m always glad for more LCD options. The one remaining CRT is visually pretty cool, though, looking like something out of a less-dystopian version of Brazil. Amusing for old-school Apple fans is the “revolutionary” all-in-one cable, a feature originally appearing on the Quadra AV series machines. New G4s: The announcement that the two higher-end G4s would have dual processors is great. They’re of limited use until OS X comes out since OS 9 has very limited multiprocessor support, but when that happens, this will be the first machine that’s really induced hardware envy in me since I got a G3. The Cube: I don’t get it. It looks like a paper shredder. (A very handsome paper shredder, but still…) It costs more than an equivalent G4 minitower, and is less expandable. I couldn’t imagine who the target market for these little rascals is, but apparently there is one. I do like the idea of a fanless, really quiet, very powerful machine though. But for expandability, I’ll put up with a bit of extra white noise. Microsoft Games: My favorite part. Microsoft will be bringing most of their games to the Mac. I’ll get to play Age of Empires II and Halo. What’s not to like?