Wow, this sure has been a pretty dead week for Apple watchers. Not much of anything really happened, and we can only surmise that after the whole "G4 Speed Dump" fiasco, Steve and the gang are taking some time to cool their jets before poking their heads back out into public. And who could blame them? The whole cancellation and slow, cumulative reinstatement of G4 pre-orders was a corporate embarrassment that not only took some of the shine off of Apple's hard-won public image, but also might wind up in the history books as one of the big business boo-boos of the latter twentieth century. The result? What we can only assume is an Apple-mandated radio silence that has driven most Mac news sites to post enthusiastically about incredible new software updates and competitive upgrade prices. (By the way, have we mentioned that Insider Software now offers FontAgent 8 for just $34.95 to owners of Extensis Suitcase 8? Check it out!)

In fact, the news has been so slow lately that some of us having been praying for something-- anything-- to happen. Apple announces it's buying CompUSA and turning all stores into Mac-only retail outlets. Larry Ellison spills the beans on Apple's development of a top-secret line of kitchen appliances. Steve Jobs freaks out and runs naked through the streets of Cupertino, baring his NeXT chest tattoo for all to see, as he flings fistfuls of mashed potatoes at the local populace. Anything. (Heck, we'd give up our cable modem if it would make that last one come true. Well, okay, maybe not.) Instead, though, what we got was yet another Apple PR fiasco-- but this one hit the U.K. instead of here in the States. It would appear that Apple has once again bowed out of the Apple Expo in London; if that's true, then this makes Apple's no-show status an official hat trick. Macworld UK has more on the sticky subject.

See, Apple pulled out of the 1998 show when the conference's organizers tried to take the event cross-platform. Then this year's show, originally scheduled to kick off on November 25th at London's Olympia Hall, got shelved in favor of a much bigger Apple Expo 2000 in March at the larger Wembley Centre. The idea was that Wembley could hold 2600 Apple fanatics all eager to catch a Steve Jobs keynote. Unfortunately, as rumored by Mac the Knife, now it looks like Steve has other plans that day; he wants to keynote at Internet World, instead. What that means is that all the irate vendors who got shafted by sinking money into the 1998 Apple-less Apple Expo (and its consequently anemic attendance numbers) may in fact have been shafted again, since now Apple may not attend the March show either. Imagine a Macworld Expo in San Francisco, for instance, without Apple showing up. Yikes. So of course the vendors are "furious," and they've got a few choice words on the matter in further Macworld UK coverage. But hey, look at the bright side-- at least the Mac news sites now have something to write about other than what dish soap is best for cleaning your mouse. It ain't Streaking Steve, but it's something.

If you're dying of thirst in this Mac news drought, fear not-- as you well know, news isn't the only wavelength in the Mac-presence spectrum. Don't forget the wild world of entertainment! After all, when you're flipping channels through your vast cable TV selection, do you really linger over CNN when there's a showing of back-to-back Mama's Family episodes on the TBS Superstation? We thought not. So don't fret; just start channel-surfing and you're sure to run into a Mac sighting sooner or later.

See, the odds are in your favor these days, because Apple's newfound obsession with brightly-colored translucent products has made the company even more popular with Hollywood producers looking to stick a computer on the set of their show or movie. Really, if you're in charge of set design for, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and if anyone can get me that job, I'm on the next plane out there!), which are you going to throw on a dormroom desk: a beige, bulgy-looking Compaq Presario, or the simple lines, classic curves, and eye-catching colors of an iMac? Ooooh, tough choice. And that's why Macs are appearing on at least 56 shows this television season, according to an Entertainment Weekly article-- it's the Macs themselves, not any kind of bribe. At least, so says J.J. Abrams, cocreator of Felicity, one of the most Mac-friendly shows on the tube: "There's something human and friendly and optimistic about Macintosh." In fact, the only drawback we can think of to using Macs on the set is the way that the stars might get upstaged by a computer that's prettier than they are.

56 shows. Compare that to IBM's slice of the Onscreen Pie: a piddly 24 shows feature IBM computers instead. Too bad these numbers don't translate into market share percentages, right? As for how IBM feels about their products being basically shunned by Hollywood, spokesperson Trink Guarino (?!) says, "We don't feel sad or left out." Oh, sure, IBM's keeping a brave face, but we all know they're really crying inside... It always hurts to be the last one picked for the stickball team.

When the G3 processor first surfaced, its performance was startlingly better than the 603e and 604e processors that we in the Mac world were used to. We remember when we first test-drove a G3-upgraded 7500 several months before Apple released the Power Mac G3. Actually, we don't remember a whole lot, because when we saw Word 6 launch in about two seconds, we passed out. A processor that actually makes Microsoft bloatware seem speedy? Now that's fast.

In fact, the G3 was (and is) fast enough that one of its architectural drawbacks didn't seem like that big a deal; apparently the G3 isn't really built for multiprocessing. Meaning, whereas Apple shipped a couple of dual-processor 604e systems, the G3 was strictly a one-chip pony. (Eeeww.) That's even less of a problem when you consider that the Mac OS itself still can't take advantage of more than one processor; it was only specially-written software, like Photoshop, that saw a speed boost when more than one chip was present. So, no dual-G3 was no big loss.

The G4, on the other hand, is reportedly very multiprocessing-friendly, and it's only a matter of time before Apple ships heavy-duty systems armed with two or four G4s to give the Mac world a seriously fast server or a graphics workstation that will make the pros weep with joy. Apple Insider has a report on Apple's multiprocessor development, "Project Mystic," and estimates that the first dual- and quad-processor G4 systems might debut at next February's Seybold conference. By then we'll hopefully have Mac OS X, complete with system-level symmetric multiprocessing support-- but even if we don't, you just know that Photoshop will be tuned to crunch pixels with multiprocessing gusto. And what's this? A report on MacInTouch that even Mac OS 9 is exhibiting some form of system-level multiprocessor support when installed on a 9500/180MP? Hmmm, intriguing. Sounds like Apple's really pushing this, and why not? With Pentium IIIs reaching 733 MHz and G4s barely scraping 500, what better way for Apple to fight the Megahertz Wars than with a relatively low-cost dual-G4/400, possibly marketable as a G4/800? Start saving those pennies...