Evidently nostalgia is big right now, because we're smack in the middle of a hot and heavy old-school rumor revival. First there was our playful resurrection of the old Disney-Apple buyout story-- a classic for the ages. Not long after, one Wall Street analyst chimed in with an opinion that a Sun-Apple merger might make more sense; those of you who have been around for awhile remember a similar scenario making the rounds back in the Scary Times of the mid-'90s. And what about old product rumors? Just yesterday the alleged mention of an iPad gave new life to the Apple handheld speculation, and the age-old "Apple-branded PCI expansion chassis" is now back in the rumor mill, too. What next in the Parade of Ancient Rumors?

We'll tell you what's next: the Apple Network Computer, that's what's next. Yes, as faithful viewer dabiz tipped us off, the alleged "Mac thin client" that appeared in AtAT's historic first official episode way back in August of 1997 is now back with a vengeance, thanks to some terrific unsubstantiated dirt over at wincent.org. Sure, it's all branded as "forward-looking analysis," but don't let that keep you from whipping yourself into a frothing speculative frenzy.

Here's the skinny: now that Mac OS X is finally a mere eleven days from release, Apple is reportedly turning up the heat on developing inexpensive, diskless thinMacs that can act as remote clients to a server running Rhapso-- uh, Mac OS X. The capability has been in the software since NeXTSTEP, which allowed one computer to NetBoot from another. Imagine being able to sit down at any of fifty thinMacs in a college lab, for example, type in your username and password, and watch your terminal boot via the network with your own personal Desktop, preferences, applications, and files.

It's not sci-fi; people have been doing stuff like this for over a decade-- just not on Macs. Given Apple's push to reclaim the top spot in education sales, thinMacs bundled with Mac OS X servers might well be one part of a nifty strategy to get Macs back into school labs. Toss AirPort into the equation and you're looking at a really compelling possibility. We picture each kid filing into the classroom, grabbing a wireless iBook-style thinMac from the charging station, sitting wherever they like, and logging in. Since the thinMacs have no hard disks, there are no moving parts to break, and the kids are free to mill about the classroom with their computers and collaborate. It could be very neat.

This is all a pretty logical direction for Apple to take, but wincent.org seems to be stating (without any actual evidence, mind you) that Apple is past the concept stage with this project. The part that triggers our skepticism reflex, though, is wincent.org's assertion that Apple's thin client "will use AMD chips" instead of a PowerPC. Not that it's technically impossible, or anything, since all the thinMac needs is a Quartz interpreter and code to handle slinging packets back and forth over a wire (the applications are all run on the PowerPC server, anyway), but given the PowerPC's suitability for use in embedded devices, we can't see why Apple would bother going Athlon in a thin client.

But whatever. We're just happy to have another ride on the Nostalgia Train. All aboard!

Frankly, we're a little tired of Motorola getting smacked around so often over these past few months, but the company just keeps taking a beating. At first the woes were entertaining, on some sick level; we were sorry for the people who lost their jobs, of course, but at the same time, there was a certain soap opera thrill that accompanied those 2500 pink slips in January. And when Motorola axed another 4000 jobs last month, that, too, was a source of drama. But mix in the forced vacations, the possibility of the company's first quarterly loss in fifteen years, and an imminent multibillion-dollar lawsuit, and that's about all the hard-luck drama we can stand. When Moe pokes Curly in the eyes, that's arguably funny to a certain sensibility; if Moe grabbed a tire iron and beat Curly well beyond death and then dismembered the body with a hacksaw, well, that's a whole different story altogether.

But guess what? We are now officially in tire-iron-and-hacksaw territory. As faithful viewer Johnny pointed out, the beleaguered PowerPC-maker is chopping yet another 7000 jobs. (In the old days, we'd say that if Motorola could crank out G4s as quickly as it can hand out pink slips, we'd be golden; now that G4 availability is officially "greater than anticipated," though, we got nothin'.) According to CNNfn, like the January layoffs, these new cuts are localized to the company's "mobile phone manufacturing business," so there shouldn't be any direct effect on the supply of processors for Macs. Still, though, Motorola is clearly hurting in a big way, and that probably doesn't bode well for future PowerPC R & D funding.

Quarterly losses, looming lawsuits, three rounds of layoffs in as many months-- what's next for the Job of the semiconductor and cell phone industries? Weeping sores? Plagues of locusts? Perhaps Motorola made a deal with the netherworld to get its chips past the 500 MHz mark, and its recent woes are the holy and terrible vengeance of an offended deity. All we know is, we sure won't be visiting Motorola headquarters anytime soon. We've got a thing about being struck by lightning or smitten with boils.

If you're one of those poor souls who is still having a tough time finding a PlayStation 2, our advice is to relax and wait a couple of years-- they'll be all over the place once the PlayStation 3 ships. Of course, by then you'll probably want the latest and greatest... especially since the PS3 will probably have more in common with your Mac than you might expect.

While Motorola is busy shoveling employees onto the fire to keep the heat on, the other PowerPC manufacturer is taking a decidedly playful turn these days. You probably already knew that IBM is producing a "custom, game-centric" variant of the PowerPC called "Gekko" for Nintendo's upcoming GAMECUBE console, which is slated to ship this summer. What you may not have heard yet is that, when it comes to Big Blue creating game-friendly microprocessors, the Gekko is just the beginning. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony has just hired IBM to create the chip that will power the PS3.

We can't say for certain that the PS3 chip (code-named "Cell") will be a PowerPC derivative, but since that's the route IBM took with the Gekko, it seems like an obvious strategy. It's also true that we don't know for certain that Cell is destined for the PS3; Sony's not saying one way or the other, and the official word is that Cell will be used in Sony's "next generation of consumer electronics products." But unless Sony has plans for a Walkman with gigaflop performance, we think a Cell-powered PlayStation 3 is a pretty safe bet.

Now, if Nintendo and Sony can hire IBM to design and produce chips that are optimized purely for game consoles, why on earth doesn't Apple hire Big Blue to make chips that are designed expressly for use in Macs? One of the setbacks in the PowerPC's history was when Motorola moved to AltiVec and IBM didn't, claiming that AltiVec was of little use in servers, which is where it wanted its chips to go. Okay, fine. Can't Apple just write out a big, fat check and commission a custom chip, just like Nintendo and Sony did for their game systems? Just something to consider in case Motorola's financial difficulties start to pull Apple down with it...