Uninformed Apple skeptics have trouble seeing most Mac client systems as anything but home or schoolroom computers. In fact, most of Apple’s client systems are made for commercial use: PowerBook G4 notebooks, Power Mac G5 power desktops and iMac G5 desktops are fast, indestructible, kitchen-sink-included machines in which design style is a functional, as well as aesthetic attribute. Lift a Power Mac G5, a Cinema Display or an iMac G5 and you’ll be surprised by their weight. Tight fit and finish with minimal seams, thick aluminum and heavy polycarbonate exteriors and exceptionally solid internal construction suit Apple’s commercial clients to high duty cycles. And while it isn’t officially part of Apple’s marketing, commercial Macs adapt unusually well to sub-optimal operating conditions.In recent weeks, with a particular spike in new system releases occurring over the past couple of weeks, Apple has reworked its entire commercial client lineup. In other words, all Macintosh systems of worth to professional users now ship in configurations that are not just PC-style speed bumped from preceding models, but are meaningfully overhauled. I’ll address each of the upgraded models in a separate post, starting with the Power Mac G5 Dual and Quad workstations.Without question, the biggest news in Apple’s client lineup, and to my mind, the most powerful and innovative client system in Apple’s history, is Power Mac G5 Quad. Finally, Apple designed a workstation. This is Apple and IBM’s answer to PC vendors’ (especially HP’s) dual-core Xeon and Opteron workstations. x86-based workstations were themselves an answer to overpriced RISC, but the right solution all along was not x86, but an affordable, meaningful RISC workstation. While I must make clear that I have yet to work or live with any of Apple’s new systems, it looks like Apple may have created the first true workstation with a desktop’s price tag and ease of use. I know of nothing that compares to it. On specs, Power Mac G5 Quad, with a pair of 2.5 GHz dual-core PowerPC CPUs, is a RISC Unix workstation contender because it is a RISC Unix workstation, a title it earns without bending terminology and, remarkably (to me), without straining budgets. The base Power Mac G5 Quad costs $3,299 and ships with 512 MB of 533 MHz DDR2 RAM with room for 16 GB, 1 MB of L2 cache for each core, four PCI-Express expansion slots (three open), a 250 GB SATA hard drive with room for one more drive, and a 16x, dual-layer SuperDrive DVD burner.Apple is also using IBM’s new dual-core PowerPC G5 CPU to extend multiprocessor performance across the Power Mac G5 line. At $1,999, the least costly Power Mac G5 Dual uses a single dual-core 2 GHz PowerPC G5 processor but is otherwise very similar in specifications to the Quad.The market and productivity impact of Apple’s first workstation is inestimable. That impact isn’t rooted solely in impressive hardware specs; the productivity, developer and user friendliness and performance advantages of OS X Unix, the Mac application platform and the huge library of apps that leverage these are key to Power Mac G5 Quad’s value. A word to the wise: Don’t let the sub-$5K price tag trick you into calling this an “entry workstation.” If you go comparison shopping for other vendors’ four-core, 64-bit Unix RISC workstations, you won’t find anything close to Power Mac G5 Quad under $5,000. You get a bargain hunter’s merit badge if you find a quad-core workstation worth a damn (meaning that it does real work right out of the box) for under $10,000.I can get excited about the specs and potential impact of Power Mac G5 Quad without presuming that Apple has delivered all of the power that the technology promises. Intel has proven that it’s easy to implement dual core processor technology as a gimmick. I’m encouraged that Apple went to the authority on multi-core, IBM, for its first workstation, putting to rest rumors that Apple and IBM weren’t even on speaking terms. To produce this workstation, Apple had to negotiate and commit to the purchase of a large number of IBM dual-core G5 CPUs. Apple will undoubtedly do a dual-core Xserve G5 line soon, so Apple’s commitment to its most demanding professional users is not in doubt. Software Development