Macs are indeed in a dire state right now but this is mainly hinged upon the move to 64-bit, so sure, things aren't great but by the end of this year (by which time even the mini/emac will have a g5, presumably), apple's market share could start doing big things. I was of the mind that the pbs (and maybe even, as was alleged by digitimes, the ibooks at the same time) would go g5 upon the release of tiger, but if that's really happening in april, i guess not. Here is the mac line as I see it:
PMs - these need an upgrade soon, but until ibm brings out a new processor, what with? Its been said before, but WWDC at the latest, surely? Until then, of course, PMs look increasingly shaky. But so what if the imac gets too close? U can't do anything to it. But why would I wanna buy a top-of-the-line mac only to have to upgrade almost every component to justify having bought the model over an imac.
Imacs - these are fine, other than a few minor hitches, most of which will hopefully be resolved with the next rev. (april 1st is dubious for obvious reasons, but as this has done so well and there's nothing else they can update between now and june other than emacs, they probably will), which TS is probably overpessimistic about as a gpu upgrade seems certain to me. AE/BT etc may become standard as with the laptops, those who suggest otherwise forget that imacs aren't conventional desktops and that half the draw is the lack of wiring. Mine shipped on thursday so there's nothing I can do about any of that crap now, but whatever, it'll run tiger, so i'm happy.
As for PBs/IBs: No matter what testbench scores say, G4s will struggle with tiger, its a fact. Say what u like about ppl who always want the latest and greatest, right now apple is selling laptops that will struggle with this year's OS, and that is just not cricket. PBs will have something new by WWDC, maybe sooner. That rev. D was clearly just an attempt to make the line more competitive by lowering the price and offering special features as standard that were optional before, and that we can assume will be standard on the g5s/dual cores (does anyone know how well a dual core would run tiger?). Ibooks will get g5 as soon as possible, a simultaneous release is likely but only if there are enough processors and they can offer a pb that is significantly faster than the ib. I have been told unequivocally by many ppl that a g5 cannot be put into a laptop, but I'm under the impression that IBM came up with a mobile variation on it ages ago, which'll be ready pretty soon.
Emac: Back in the fray, apparently. And why not? CRT may not fit in with steve's big plan but these fill an important gap in the edu market that minis could never replace. Who knows, they could even squeeze an lcd in but i don't see how with such thin profit margins. Emacs need g5s by the end of the year and will probably get them a few months after the ibooks do.
Minis: A crucial element in Apple's bid for market share, I'd expect these to fare similarly to the emacs. It will be interesting to see which of these gets a new chip first, or if they will be updated together and treated as part of the same product tier.
Now that the ipod and desktop lines have 3 tiers, ie mini/imac/pm and shuffle/mini/photo, maybe Jobs will do the same to laptops, bringing out a sub-notebook or ebook (they'll probably come up with something better than that) designed for wireless browsing and basic operations on the go. Unlikely, but Jobs loves this kind of marketing logic.
In short, I agree with beck446, in that the present is bleak, but the future looks promising. Apple's fluffed it many times before but what with the g5, the acclaim heaped upon panther, all the ipod convertites, more budget options becoming available and (most importantly) the shift in role occupied by the home computer towards media centre, I'd say apple are poised to take a huge chunk out of the pc market, its just that their computers have never been so lacking in futureproofing. Of course, knowing apple, no sooner will they have resolved this mess then they'll have the G6 in PMs too early and its architecture will be as different to the g5 as it was to the g4 and everyone'll run scared back to wintel.
But as my allegedly-soon-to-be-outdated imac wings its way to me, I have to wonder how accurate my predictions truly are.
