Oh, this just keeps getting better and better... Remember how yesterday we discussed Motorola's breathless announcement that, after a year of what we must assume was some seriously intense thumb-twiddling and navel-gazing (just kidding, folks!), that obstinate 500 MHz barrier had finally been broken? Well, the reaction from the Mac community, much to our surprise, was generally not one of unbridled joy and celebration; apparently the promise of 50 extra MHz (for a blistering total of 550 big ones) "soon" isn't enough for people who have watched that "other" processor architecture recently vault the 1.5 GHz hurdle. What can we say? Some ungrateful malcontents are never satisfied.

And evidently Motorola isn't digging the heat from megahertz-starved Mac loyalists who are lambasting the company with a severity normally reserved for child molesters, nursing home arsonists, and spammers. Get this-- as we first noticed in an article over at MacSlash, the company has actually revised its own press release (yes, the same one we referred to yesterday) to remove any and all mention of the new 550 MHz G4. Vanished. Gone. Just like that. If you blinked, you missed it-- and they didn't even bother to change the date of the release. We figure this is some sort of way of saying "hey, if you spoiled brats aren't going to appreciate all our hard work, then we'll just take our ball and go home." Yes, kiddies, Motorola has turned the car around and is taking us all home right now.

Of course, it's possible that the removal of the G4/550 was not a form of punishment, but rather the correction of an honest mistake. Perhaps someone in Motorola's PR department got a little overzealous in crafting the press release, and in fact the G4/550 isn't expected "soon" at all. Heck, we'd even consider the possibility that the G4/550 was never mentioned in the press release in the first place, and that it was all a mass hallucination brought on by prolonged megahertz deficiency-- except for the fact that we've still got a copy of the original statement in our disk cache. Or did we add in the bit about the G4/550 ourselves, in a megahertz-deprived trance? And what if we're all just characters in some Motorola executive's dream-- what happens when he wakes up? Or maybe our whole universe is just, like, a single atom in the toenail of some Motorola supreme being. Ooooooo.

Anyway, the bottom line is this: officially speaking, there's no longer any reason to expect a G4/550 anytime "soon." But that's okay, because honestly, we've been maxed out at 500 MHz for so long, anything faster in the Mac world would be downright unsettling. There's something to be said for the comfort afforded by consistency. (And rationalization's always good, too.)

Enough negativity and wanton Motorola-bashing! On to the positive vibes, because after all, clock speed issues aside (yeah, marketing's important, but it's not everything), the G4 we've been enjoying as a community for the past year is actually still one seriously smokin' chip. And in the case of the dual-processor Power Macs, they're two seriously smokin' chips. Plus, we're sure those Motorola people are working like dogs to bring us ever-faster processors, and we feel bad that they often go so unappreciated-- or, more often than not, reviled. So we're happy to pass along some good news for a change.

Here we go: according to The Register, the PowerPC G4 Plus is "taped out." As in, done. Finished. Ready for production. And don't go confusing the G4 Plus with that low-power 7410 G4 that Motorola just announced to a livid world a couple of days ago; the G4 Plus is a whole different beast. Basically, it's another desktop version of the same old G4 chip we all know and love which has been "enhanced" in various lip-smacking ways. For one thing (and probably most importantly to those afflicted with clock speed envy), it boasts a longer instruction pipeline, which should allow it to debut at speeds of 700 MHz or higher. It also features a 1:1 on-chip L2 cache, "three extra AltiVec engines, and two more integer units," all of which ought to increase performance significantly beyond the gain that a simple clock speed boost would yield. Okay, so it's no 1.5 GHz, but it's solid progress nonetheless.

Now, here's the catch (because there's always a catch): just because the G4 Plus is "done" doesn't mean it's actually available. Motorola has reportedly seeded a few units of "initial silicon" to Apple so Steve's minions can start working on integrating the new chip into actual Macs, but that could be a long process. In addition, Motorola's got to figure out how to produce the things in reasonable yields; no one wants a repeat of last year's infamous "G4 Speed Dump" fiasco if G4 Plus chips turn out to be scarcer than scarce. In fact, one hopefully over-cautious Motorola source has estimated that we won't be able to buy Macs running the G4 Plus until "mid-summer 2001."

Now here's the part where we maintain a positive tone and cheerily caution Motorola that if Apple is stuck at 500 or 550 MHz for nine or ten more months (the likelihood of quad-processor Power Macs aside), we imagine that some of the more excitable elements of the Mac community at large might just possibly trot on down to Motorola headquarters to round up as many high-level executives as possible and administer a savage beat-down. In a very upbeat manner, of course. Have a nice day!

Surely there isn't a soul alive who still doubts that Microsoft's not-so-secret agenda behind the development of Internet Explorer was the elimination of Netscape as a competitor and the Microsoftization of the Internet, right? The facts are all pretty bald: the company poured millions of dollars into making a product for which it has never charged a dime, it bundled the product as the default web browser in its own operating systems when Netscape's offering was still better, and it even used threats and monopoly muscle to "persuade" Apple to make Internet Explorer the default browser instead of Netscape. Remember, all this happened before IE on either platform became much better than the only major alternative. It was a great (though apparently illegal) strategy: use market power to gain market share until, after lots of development, the product could finally compete well on its own merits. More and more the 'net is turning into "IE everywhere," especially now that Netscape's development process has apparently been incurably crippled by Microsoft's weight.

So that's all pretty obvious. But how many of you were aware that Microsoft's true motive for the proliferation of Internet Explorer is nothing less than total global domination? It's true! Faithful viewer Brant Sears was poking around Microsoft's site for information on various Macintosh products, and found a page which is very telling indeed. At broadcast time, the page in question listed "Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition" under the heading of "Macintosh Internet Technologies," as one might expect-- but the same product also appears in every single other category, including Macintosh Games, Macintosh Development Tools, Macintosh Operating Systems & Servers, Macintosh Business Software, Macintosh Home Productivity, Macintosh Reference, Macintosh Kids, Macintosh Online Services, and even Macintosh Hardware.

The secret is out! IE isn't just a browser. Heck, it isn't even just an "inseparable component of the operating system," as Microsoft would like the courts to believe. IE is, according to Microsoft's web site, all things to all people. It's an operating system, an office suite, a golf simulation, and a next-generation input device. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping. It slices, it dices, it makes Julienne fries and still cuts right through this steel can. Soon you'll store your frozen foods in it and take it for a spin down to the beach. You'll hang your clothes on it, cook your food in it, use it to keep dry when it's raining, and drink it for a burst of non-fat energy. In short, soon Internet Explorer will be everywhere-- and not just on the 'net. Now you know why it's called "IE." Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeeee!!