I guess everyone loves the new Apple Titanium PowerBook G4, just announced on Tuesday. I admit that’s a slick little laptop, but I have to reserve judgement until I see the actual thing, up close and personal. At a distance, I’m not particularly enamored by its slavish devotion to squarishness. And at 5.3 lbs., I’m not particularly impressed by its weight economy, either.

The big question everyone should be asking is, what the heck is Apple’s long-term gameplan? This may be a fancy little machine, but it still leaves unmet most of the challenges facing the company today&#58 lagging processor speeds, poor price-to-features value, ever-shrinking marketshare. I’ve been down on this company that I care for so greatly for so long now, for the simple reason that the products they’ve delivered have seemed increasingly detached from reality. I know until this year, they’ve actually managed to prosper and show a profit, but I feel like the creativity is a pale ghost of what it once was.