Are you one of those guys who was ranting wildly and foaming at the mouth about how unacceptable it is that Apple will only be at 600 MHz when the next Macworld Expo rolls around in a few weeks? If so, you might want to sit down, take a few deep breaths, and keep that prescription bottle within easy reach. Granted, you have a right to be upset, what with the x86 architecture partying down somewhere up at the 1.5 GHz mark while Motorola takes a year to ratchet us up to the awe-inspiring, mind-blowing clock speed of 600 MHz. Personally, though, we'd rather laugh wild amid severest woe than give ourselves a coronary over something as (let's face it) fundamentally meaningless as the Megahertz Wars... and if you're already chewing your own legs off over the whole 600 MHz thing, you're going to face a lengthy hospital stay if you put any stock into the latest dirt over at Mac OS Rumors.

See, a great many of us have taken the rumors of impending dual-processor 600 MHz Power Mac G4 systems as something approaching cold, hard fact, but it's not by any means etched in stone. Motorola hasn't announced anything. Apple hasn't announced anything. All of our expectations are based on a handful of dodgy rumors-- well, that and the seeming impossibility that even Motorola could be incompetent enough not to bring Apple to 600 MHz after so long a wait. But get this: according to MOSR, Apple is getting "nervous" about Motorola's ability to supply enough 600 MHz G4 processors to allow the announcement of the G4/600 at the show. In the unlikely event that Motorola doesn't come through with the goods, Apple may be forced to postpone the planned Stevenote introduction of the new 600 MHz model.

Now, before you put your fist through a wall, don't jump to the conclusion that this means we'll still be stuck at 500 MHz after Steve leaves the stage. Far from it! Because rumor has it that if, by some dark miracle, Motorola somehow surpasses even the wildest estimations of its capacity for inertia and can't score Apple the (relatively) good stuff, then Steve may instead announce an alternate speed bump of the top-of-the-line Power Mac-- to a record-breaking 533 MHz. (Listen! Hear that muffled "thud"? That's the sound of dozens of highly-strung Mac fans simultaneously keeling over with burst aneurysms.)

But fear not; the new Power Macs will still have plenty of other enhancements going for them, like faster memory, a faster graphics bus, and a RADEON graphics card. Surely those upgrades will overshadow any negative press about a mere 33 MHz speed increase after a full year's wait, right? Why, we bet Apple's stock will go through the roof! We can hardly wait for the 9th.

If the pessimistic prospect of a Power Mac G4/533 leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, why not sample a bit of unbridled optimism? Remember, Steve loves surprises, and the odds of him walking out on that stage and not unleashing a horde of impressive new gear are pretty darn slim. C'mon, he'd never do that! "But AtAT," some of you are saying, "what about the Expo last January? We didn't get any new toys then-- not even the Pismo PowerBook that everyone was expecting." Well, that's a very good point. Which is why we're now going to change the subject abruptly and without explanation.

Anyway, as we were saying, Steve loves to surprise us and shower us with goodies. In addition to faster Power Macs, most people think he'll take the wraps off of the PowerBook G4. And while it'd be an unusual move, is there any real reason why he couldn't upgrade Apple's entire product line? Just think of it: new iMacs, iBooks, and even new Cubes could comprise a dazzling array of bright, shiny objects intended to divert attention away from the lurking specter of Apple's first quarterly loss in three years. Hey, it could happen.

What's that? Your natural skepticism won't let you consider such a glorious possibility without at least a teensy sliver of actual evidence? Well, okay, Scully-- luckily for you, faithful viewer Darren Dewey stumbled upon an interesting page over at MacMall. If you check out their Mac "clearance" section, you'll find that every single Mac in Apple's product line is listed. What more proof do you need that Uncle Steve is preparing to disgorge a veritable plethora of Mac-flavored goodness? Oh, sure, we suppose that there's the slightest chance that the MacMall people haven't the remotest clue what the term "clearance" means, or perhaps they're using a slightly lax definition of the word just to sell some of that excess inventory we've all been hearing so much about, but we figure Santa Steve's pulling out all the stops to make up for the disappointing quarter. He's just a jolly ol' feller, after all (when we isn't firing elves in the elevator).

Finally, a viable strategy for selling all those Cubes currently clotting the arteries of the retail channel like so much... artery-clogging stuff. Word on the street is that those rebates aren't working nearly as well as Apple had hoped, and so evidently the company has fallen back on Plan B: product placement on highly-rated TV shows. At the top of the list is the big gun, The Drew Carey Show. The idea here is to enhance the Cube's image as a glamorous status symbol by associating it with a fat, crew-cut geek who can't hold onto a woman. Really, what could possibly be more effective?

Well, okay, that's not really Apple's plan at all. As faithful viewer Matt Bieber reports (and we ourselves witnessed personally), as of last night's episode, Drew does indeed now have a Cube on his desk at work, complete with matching 15-inch flat-panel Studio Display. But since Drew is the end-of-the-20th-century Everyman, clearly Apple is trying to market the Cube as the choice of Midwestern beer-drinking regular guys-- instead of just rich executives or arty people with trust funds. That ought to pump up those holiday sales numbers, right? And hey, if it doesn't, at least Mimi's continuing iMac upgrades (we're pretty sure we glimpsed an Indigo one last night) should help on the consumer end of things... provided, of course, that Apple continues its aggressive push to corner the "abrasive women who wear too much makeup" market.

Meanwhile, Drew's a cubicle-dwelling middle manager at a department store-- yet he has a Cube and an LCD display on his desk. Excuse me, but can we quit our jobs, move to Cleveland, and work for Winfred-Louder, too? Heck, even the guys in the mail room probably at least have iMacs to play with. Then again, Drew just married his male boss; maybe that's why he gets to drive the sweet Mac set-up. We suspect there are limits to how low we'd sink to get a Cube at work, and we're not eager to find out what those limits are...