The bees are a-buzzin', and they want to know what's up with the PowerBook. Apple recently insisted that there would be no "new hardware products" unveiled at the Apple Expo in Paris next month, but is a revised PowerBook a "new hardware product"? Even if it is, Steve didn't say a thing about no new hardware at Seybold instead, or even at a separate Apple event before then. And given that Apple just ended its "Burning Desires" PowerBook promo ten days early so that it could slash prices on the titanium wonders by $400-500 (a move with all the earmarks of a massive channel-clearing effort), many crafty Apple-watchers fully expect Steve to drive a revised PowerBook right through one of those mammoth plot holes sometime next month.

We've already mentioned cryptic auto-borne messages hinting at PowerBooks running at up to 667 MHz with a CD-RW option and disks reaching the 48 GB mark, but what of the graphics chip? Since no one's scrawled any GPU-related hints on our car yet, we've been on the fence, wondering whether Apple would stick with an underpowered ATI RAGE Mobility 128, or make the leap to nVIDIA's zippy (but power-hungry) new GeForce2 Go. The just-announced-yesterday ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, however, may be exactly what PowerBook fans have been waiting for: nVIDIA-class performance with half the power draw. And according to Mac OS Rumors, "reliable Apple sources" are insisting that ATI's new chip is indeed destined to find its way onto the motherboard of the next PowerBook-- though when we'll actually be able to buy one is reportedly still up in the air. As faithful viewer Chris notes, MOSR is decidedly undecided on when the new PowerBook will surface, because "nobody on the grapevine appears willing to read the entrails as our friends at As the Apple Turns have been known to do."

We greatly appreciate the high-profile mention over at MOSR, but reading entrails? That is so two months ago! These days all the hip and happening prognosticators such as ourselves are casting the I Ching for clarity and insight into Mac-related matters. Probing the ancient judgments of King Wen and mining the Duke of Chou's commentaries for rumor fodder is where it's at, baby. Indeed, we spent most of last night slingin' the Yin and Yang (i.e. the coins, gutterbrain; yeesh, we're just glad we didn't say anything about "manipulating yarrow stalks"), and the hexagrams say that a new PowerBook in September is darn close to being a sure thing. How else could you interpret "the powerful prince is honored with horses in large numbers"?

Sadly, the coins are steadfastly unhelpful when it comes to shedding light on the nature of the new PowerBook's graphics subsystem. We don't trust the translations of others, and we're somewhat handicapped on the interpretation front since the only Chinese we know comes out of fortune cookies ("Sesame Oil: Ma-You"), but we're pretty sure that anytime we try to discover what GPU is purring under the hood of the TiBook Rev. B, the answer we get is "A Suffusion of Yellow." Given that perplexing state of affairs, we figure we'll just wait and see-- and keep our fingers crossed for a Mobility RADEON-toting PowerBook G4/667 surfacing sometime in the next four weeks.

Longtime viewers already know the long and sordid tale of Michael Dell's nosedive into Steve-obsessed madness, what with his laundry list of copycat moves that eventually crossed the line from shameless Apple product and feature duplication straight into self-destructive and dangerous behavior. Overall, we feel that Mike should inspire pity, not ire (unless you somehow find yourself within fifty feet of him, in which case he should inspire fear for your own safety and a sudden and hasty retreat). Occasionally, though, his sickness makes him go too far... and then it's time for pity to be replaced with a firm corrective hand. Perhaps one that's clutching a stout length of rubber hose, for instance.

See, this time he's spiralled so deep into psychosis, poor ol' Mike occasionally thinks he is Steve Jobs. Don't believe us? Look no further than his recent interview in MIT's Technology Review, as pointed out by faithful viewer Ray; there he is, spouting off about Dell's paltry R&D expenditures (why would Dell pay for hardware R&D when Apple does it all for them?) and the company's dubious distinction at having shipped the "first 486 machine" on the market, when suddenly, bam! There he is in full Steve mode. You can tell, because just after the personality change, he states with all seriousness and without a hint of shame, "we were the first to integrate wireless into notebooks, with integrated antennas."

Now, Mike certainly couldn't have been talking about Dell when he uttered that statement, because his company didn't even announce a notebook with integrated antennas for wireless networking until June of last year, and those systems weren't slated to ship until this past December. Anyone with a smidge of Apple product history in the ol' attic, however, knows that Apple introduced the original iBook way back in July of 1999, something like a year and a half before Dell got its equivalent wireless solution out the door. We can only conclude, therefore, that when Mike boasted to Tech Review about having been the first to build wireless into laptop computers, he was actually speaking as Steve-- or, rather, "Steve." Spooky, huh?

After that one little slip into Steveland, Mike snapped back into his own personality (such as it is) and appeared to remain relatively under control for the remainder of the interview. But it's obvious that the man can only keep the floodgates closed for so long, and these little "lapses" are going to get more and more frequent until Mike's personality is wholly eclipsed by that of "Steve." When the blue button-down shirt gets replaced with a black turtleneck, we suggest you duck and cover, because the man's going to blow...

Okay, clearly the world at large isn't going to let the whole "Palm/Apple" rumor thingy die a graceful death anytime soon, so we figure we'll give the public what it wants and parade its battered and near-lifeless body around on a stick to the delight and entertainment of all. After all, it's easy when the San Francisco Chronicle stitches a few interesting factoids together into the framework for a glorious rumor rebirth, as noted by faithful viewer Ben. Kevorkian, shmevorkian; a noteworthy fact here, an innuendo there, and voilà: this rumor's on life support for at least another year! So whaddaya think-- Apple-branded Palm in January?

Most of the facts presented are old news, such as Steve Jobs's abortive attempt to buy Palm in its pre-IPO days and his recent statement to Fortune magazine: "I still wish we had been able to buy it." Also filed squarely under the category of "been there, done that" is the comparison of Palm's depressed market cap ($2.3 billion) to Apple's massive wad of cash on hand ($4.2 billion). But there are a couple of new tidbits there, and they're quite tasty to a rumor hound looking for more grist for the Apple-Palm mill: for instance, we knew about the "poison pill" that would make any acquisition of Palm, Inc. less attractive to buyers due to "huge tax liabilities," but we didn't know that "the restrictions will expire in June." That means that an Apple buyout of Palm suddenly turns into an infinitesimally less unlikely event in just ten months' time! Mark your calendars, kids!

And what are we to make of the comments of former Appleite and current Be bigwig Jean-Louis Gassée, who, after failing to sell his company to Apple in 1996, just succeeded in selling it to Palm a couple of weeks ago? Apparently someone asked him if perhaps Apple might try to buy Palm again next year once the "poison pill" clause expires; his reply was reportedly a simple "I didn't hear you." Does Jean-Louis need his ears cleaned out, or was he being deliberately evasive because he knows more than he's allowed to let on? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. One thing is abundantly clear, however; we're all going to be talking about an Apple buyout of Palm until it actually happens, or a giant space fish swallows the planet whole and snuffs out humanity in an instant. Whichever comes first.