Following the release of the

Following the release of the iMac, Apple looks ready to revamp its professional range of desktop machines, possibly this week. The news is not surprising, given the growing megahertz gap between G4 processors and their Intel/AMD rivals (even if the 733Mhz G4s outperform 1.7Ghz Pentium 4s in Apple's tests). But, even if customers didn't pay attention to the "megahertz myth" (and they do), the new top-end iMac still makes the bottom-end PowerMac look a little spare - the headline specs don't differ by very much, but the price certainly does. All this also makes sense of the comments I overheard Steve Jobs making on the MacWorld conference floor two weeks ago: he said that the Apple stand, while looking similar to the one in San Francisco, would certainly have a different mix of machines when it arrived at MacWorld Tokyo in March. I thought he meant machines other than the iMac would get more of a look-in - but maybe he was referring to new machines, instead.