Is 2006 the year of the Mac?

The proliferation ofiPod accessory vendorsin the exhibit manor hall of last hebdomad ’s Macworld Expo run more than one Mac enthusiast to turn over his eye derisively and declare the show “ iPodworld . ” But there ’s lilliputian question that Apple put the Mac front and center during last calendar week ’s event .

With2005 carry on Apple ’s iPod success story , it was good to see Apple start off 2006 with a strong content to Mac users : We have n’t forgotten about you , and here ’s the test copy .

By mid - calendar week a few vendors had managed to get their hand on output iMac units — Steve Jobs was n’t kidding when he said they were shipping . And from what I saw , the novel systems looked impressive , not just for their carrying into action but also for whatwasn’tvisible — really , any physical variety at all from the previous generation .

place an Intel - base iMac and an iMac G5 side by side , you ’d be very hard - pressed to narrate the difference unless you move into the System Profiler or saw a Universal Binary - base practical app running .

Blizzard Entertainmentwas show off a development build of World of Warcraft , its pop on-line role - playing biz for Mac and PC , running on a 17 - in Core Duo iMac , and the results were impressive . Frame rates were well high than an iMac G5 , with average work anywhere from mid-40s to mid-50s look on the complexness of the panorama , with almost all computer graphic options turned on .

This unexampled build will be rolled into the next incremental update to the software , grant to a Blizzard repp at the show . That ’s exciting tidings for gamers — a limited section of the buying populace , I admit .

But game are n’t the only titles that are obligate to see performance boosts by the architecture of the new Macs , which have not only Intel Duo Core mainframe but also have much beefy graphic subsystem than before . OpenGL touches many professional applications on the Mac , from telecasting editing to image editing and screen background publishing . Apple ’s exposure of Core Video in Tiger makes it more significant than ever to have systems with strong graphics bread and butter .

Wall Street certainly reacted positivelyto Apple ’s innovation of Intel - based Macs . old jumps in Apple ’s broth cost have largely been peg to new iPod innovation or prosperous quarterly profit reports . But last week saw Apple ’s stock price rally to an adjusted all time high of above $ 86 per percentage — ripe for yet another neckcloth schism , according to some financial analysts .

With such a significant conflict between the young and honest-to-goodness iMacs , I have to enquire — how far is the gulf going to be between Apple ’s Power Mac G5 and whatever will exchange them ?

I have no idea , and only fourth dimension will tell . But I ca n’t look to find out .