Thanks to everyone for the kudos...for the record, the wedding is the 27th, followed by your basic Hawaiian honeymoon for a week or two thereafter, so I'll be incommunicado for a bit.

On a totally different topic, regarding the entire-album-vs-single-song-purchasing brouhaha, some of the anti-single crowd have tried to use the argument that selling individual songs instead of entire albums is the artistic equivalent of selling individual scenes instead of entire movies on DVD/VHS.

While this sounds like a valid argument at first glance, my response is as follows:

1. Hey, good idea! Try it out and see what happens. My guess? Very few people would be be interested in paying, $0.99 to purchase *only* the "Grand Central Station" scene from Carlito's Way, or *only* the shower scene from Psycho, and it would be financially unrewarding...but who knows?

2. If this were a legit argument, then every FM radio station should be required to play entire albums, in order, instead of individual songs; for that matter, the labels shouldn't be allowed to release "greatest hits" or "best of..." CDs, since those "disrupt the artistic flow" of the album.

It's a pretty weak argument at best, and an insulting one at worst.

lowtech--muchos gracious :)

Notice regarding the next System Shootouts update:

I've received several e-mails from people wanting to know when the Desktop System Shootouts http://www.macobserver.com/shootouts/ will be updated, given the G5 announcement at WWDC.

While I've started some prep work on the high-end desktop systems, I won't be doing the actual comparisons until sometime in mid-August, for two reasons:

1. The new PowerMac G5s aren't expected to ship until sometime in August (possibly as late as Sept. 2, according to several other sites); while I've been known to "pre-post" comparison specs by several weeks due to shipping delays (i.e., the 17" PowerBook), in this case it was stated very clearly upfront that the new systems were still at least 6-8 weeks away.

2. More to the point, I'm getting married at the end of July, which means I'm a bit preoccupied with a few things, and will continue to be so through the middle of August.

Please look for all-new $2,500, $3,000 and $3,500 shootouts in late August, along with a special head-to-head, bells'n'whistles $4,500 comparison between Apple's DP 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 and Dell's DP 3.06 GHz Xeon Workstation.

Thanks for your patience!

Yofal--interesting, except that the Rev. A was actually released in August, not May (it was *announced* in May, however).

Matt--re. Soundsticks--well, they're a *lot* better than the el cheapo Altec-Lansing $25 speakers I had before (which were servicable, but...)

The speakers themselves are definitely better than the Pro speakers, but the key difference is, of course, the subwoofer--no idea how the subwoofer on the soundsticks compares with others, but having *any* subwoofer will make a dramatic difference.

Careful now, my fiancee just bought me the Soundsticks for my birthday yesterday, and I *LOVE* 'em :)

Then again, *any* 2.1 speaker system would beat out the ones I had.

(blink) OK, I've decided to come over for a visit...

I hear things are less, um, noisy over here? :)