Call us crazy, but we sense that something's askew with the fabric of reality right now-- at least, reality in the Apple realm. Usually when a Macworld Expo gets underway, we find ourselves struggling to narrow the burgeoning plot crop down to a few concrete elements to work into our show. There's a whole lot of chin-rubbing and head-scratching and looks of fierce concentration as we stare at an overstuffed MacSurfer page that looks like it blew up in the microwave and try to narrow thirty-seven potential subjects down to our final three. It's kind of like Star Search. (The old one with Ed McMahon, not that Arsenio Hall tripe.)

This time, though, we find ourselves engaged in a far more typical struggle. Forget about narrowing down from thirty-seven; this time around we're having enough trouble just scrounging up three borderline dramatic topics in the first place. That's not to say that yesterday's Stevenote was blah or anything, though it does seem that we enjoyed it more than a lot of people-- there's an awful lot of whining going on out there right now. But with no new Macs, one new iPod (five colors don't count, unless you really want us to do separate scenes on green, pink, and blue), and one all-new application, it looks like we may have exhausted the Stevenote drama supply in only one episode. It's just not natural, we tells ya. We've decided to blame it on tachyons.

If you still don't believe that something's amiss with the very structure of physical existence, then consider this: the day after a Stevenote, Apple's stock went up. Since when does that ever happen? At least we think we found the reason, though: according to MacMinute, we aren't the only ones who think GarageBand is the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas, and the joints and/or sleepwear of the entire Insecta and Mammalia classes. In the Mercury News, analyst Michael Gartenberg is quoted as saying, "you look at an application like GarageBand-- you can't get that on another platform at any price. People will buy Macs on the basis of GarageBand."

That's right, people, an analyst agrees with us. And what's more, a Reuters article quotes another analyst, Tim Bajarin, as concurring that "GarageBand might even have more long-term effect on Apple's sales." That means two, count 'em, two analysts feel the same way we do. These are scary, scary times in which we live. If Rob Enderle winds up agreeing, too, then we're all in some serious trouble. Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. It would be bad.

Then again, at least Apple's stock would go up. Ka-ching!

Truth be told, we didn't really exhaust all of the Apple announcements yesterday; there was one that was a little sneaky-- well, at least as sneaky as anything can be that has its own press release. Steve omitted it completely from his keynote, most likely because he didn't relish the thought of saddling an already less-exciting-than-usual agenda with a subject that sends the less-geeky 99% of the planet to sleep faster than a Sominex-and-NyQuil smoothie. We speak, of course, of parallel computational clustering.

...Hello? Hey, WAKE UP!

C'mon, it's not that dull. You guys all got a charge out of Virginia Tech building the third-fastest supercomputer in existence out of Macs, right? Of course, the only reason you found that exciting was because you couldn't stop drooling at the thought of 1,100 dual-2.0 GHz Power Mac G5s all lined up to do your bidding, but still, fundamentally we're talking about stringing a bunch of Macs together so they can all cooperate on one set of tasks. The good news (or bad news, if you were looking for an ironclad excuse to blow $5.2 million on Mac hardware) is that you really don't need a thousand-plus top-of-the-line Power Macs to pull that off; all you need are a handful of Mac OS X systems networked together and software that lets them do the cluster thingy. Enter Xgrid.

Some of you may remember Xgrid back when it mysteriously surfaced as the subject for a new Apple discussion list last October. Despite the fact that Apple hadn't actually announced any such technology, lots of people joined the list and participated in spirited discussions questioning how they were supposed to stay on-topic ("discussions on using Xgrid") when no such product yet existed; Apple pulled the list down a little while later without so much as an "oops, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" for anyone's trouble. Now, though, Xgrid is public knowledge, and Apple previewed the technology yesterday. The geekiest 1% of the world's population cheered loudly. And nerdily.

Simply put (because if we go into any more detail, we're going to fall asleep), Xgrid allows "scientists and others working in computer intensive environments" to build software that can use Apple's Rendezvous auto-discovery technology to find idle Xgrid-enabled Macs on the network and harness their power to share in the number-crunching. Can't afford to build a top-three supercomputer? No worries-- even your school's three Mac labs will make for a nice crunch-farm after hours, letting you make the most of what's on hand. And sure, if you're not one of said "scientists or others," that may not sound like much right now, but eventually wouldn't it be kind of cool if your G5 could automatically snag CPU cycles from your PowerBook two rooms over and your kid's eMac to speed up the MPEG encoding on that iDVD project you're trying to burn?

Besides, it comes with a neato tachometer to show you how much Xgrid power is available on your network. See? It is fun for the non-nerdlings! Vroom, vroom!

"Enough with all this blather about geeks clustering Macs to put sequins on jeans, or whatever!" we hear you shout. "Where the heck are those new Power Macs we were expecting yesterday?" To which we can only respond, what you mean we, Kemo Sabe? The rumor mill has been pretty consistent with the whole "no Stevenote Power Macs" thing since Think Secret reported it two weeks ago. Someone needs to start paying more attention in class.

No worries, though; speed-bumped Power Macs aren't that far off. You may recall that the big hold-up with notching up the clock speeds in the G5 was the need for IBM to move the 130-nanometer chips to a new 90-nanometer process, which would allow lower power draws and higher frequencies. Reports from all over indicated that IBM was on track to make the switch by the end of 2003, and now we have concrete proof that the change did in fact happen. According to MacRumors, if you drop by Apple's new Xserve G5 page and download the Technical Overview PDF, you'll find a couple of references to "G5 processors using 90-nanometer process technology." Indeed, that's probably the only way Apple could possibly have wedged two G5s into a 1U rack-mount enclosure without strapping an inconveniently large chest freezer to its rear.

So thanks to the wonders of 90-nanometer technology, Apple has lower-power 2.0 GHz G5s shipping in its Xserves-- or will next month, anyway. From there it's not much of a stretch to infer that the company can also get its mitts on G5s running at higher clock speeds (say, 2.4 or even 2.6 GHz) while sucking down no more power than the 130-nanometer 2.0 GHz chips currently occupying its roomier and better-cooling Power Macs. Everything else is just details, but if you're looking for specifics, for its part, Mac OS Rumors expects 2.4 GHz if the new models ship in less than a month, or possibly 2.6 GHz systems if they don't surface until later in February. AppleInsider is projecting new Power Macs "on or after January 20th." And our UPS man says it'll happen on January 32nd, but what do you want from a guy who's still wearing those brown shorts in 8-degree weather?

If you're not one to put much stock in dates from rumor sites, more power to you; just keep reminding yourself that Steve promised publicly that the G5 would hit 3 GHz sometime this summer. Even if, by virtue of some bizarre gardening accident, the Power Mac isn't updated at all until then, hey, summer isn't that far off, right?

Of course, that's what our shorts-wearing UPS guy always says...