We admit it; while the rampant speculation about Apple's new mouse has been a pleasant diversion from the usual pre-Expo guess-a-thon about clock speeds and screen sizes, we're getting awfully anxious for July 19th to roll around so Uncle Steve can show the thing to the world and people will just shut up about it already. Anyone who's still going on and on about what the new mouse will look like, how many button actions it'll support, whether or not it'll be wireless, how many of them will fit in the average person's mouth, and whether it'll double as a motorized Pez dispenser is wasting time that could be better spent covering the real news going on in the world of Apple. AtAT, for one, will have no part in this senseless rumormongering.

Of course, having said that, and having just been informed that there is no real news happening in the Apple realm right now, we're about to spend some premium airtime filling you in on the latest buzz surrounding Apple's mysterious new input rodent. (Aren't we just full of charming contradictions? It's what makes us so gosh-darned lovable!) First of all, let's tackle the wireless issue: pretty much everybody who waxed lyrical about Apple's incredible wireless mouse has since backpedaled, stating now that Apple is far more likely to ship the thing with a standard USB cord. Mac OS Rumors, in particular, has overtly stated that the wireless version "will not be shipping any time soon" due to cost and availability factors. Sadly, this means that people (particularly those with small children and/or pet spider monkeys) who buy new Macs won't get to engage in that invigorating hide-and-seek game with their new Apple mice that they currently play with their remote controls and car keys. We are, frankly, astonished that Apple's stock has not plummeted upon the breaking of these new rumors.

Next, there's the look. Isn't it great when competing rumors sites get snippy with each other via oblique and veiled references to inaccuracy? For instance, Mac OS Rumors states that "little that has been published on the Mac Web... has been very accurate with regards to exterior appearance." Reading between the lines, we translate this, roughly, into "AppleInsider is obviously mixing prescription drugs and alcohol if they honestly think that Apple would ship a mouse that looks like a lump of silver Play-Doh that got stepped in by a large, declawed dog." AppleInsider, for its part, responded to the vast collective gagging sound made by the Mac community upon seeing the posted 3D images by reiterating that the pictures are just "artist renditions," do not depict a right-handed design, and are simply meant to give a sense of "the overall appearance and style of the new mouse, though the unit is much sleeker and compact in reality." Again, a rough translation might be, "as long as Apple's new mouse looks more like a standard computer mouse than, say, a bactrian camel wearing a fedora, we can still say we were right." Hey, what's a little waffling between friends?

Okay, so AppleInsider's info is sometimes a little sketchy-- that doesn't mean we don't love 'em to death. In fact, we love all the rumors sites, no matter how wildly inaccurate or unbelievable they may sometimes be, because they all provide grist for the mill. We firmly feel that Mac people, as a general rule, would much rather encounter a wide spectrum of info about their platform of choice, because they're capable of deciding for themselves what to believe and what to discard. Hey, it beats being spoonfed nothing but corporate press releases and pasteurized, sanitized, "official" news. (For proof, just take a gander at the voluminous and scathing reader messages posted at the end of MacWEEK's "we 'retired' Mac the Knife because we're a serious news organization now" editorial.)

So we're tickled pink that, undeterred by the ridicule they suffered after posting their, um, "unlikely" 3D sketches of Apple's new mouse, those fabulous dirt-dishers at AppleInsider have now gone and posted sketches of the new multiprocessor Power Mac G4, code-named "Mystic." That's right, kids, the fabled MP G4 boxes that we were all supposed to see way back in January are reportedly in a "near finalized" state and may show up as early as-- all together, now-- Macworld Expo! But it sounds like everyone's favorite desktop supercomputer needs to lay off the Twinkies; Mystic (as well as a new single-processor G4 unit) sports a revised enclosure that is "1 to 2 inches wider than the current models." Indeed, the sketch shows the case bulging outward as if the Mystic in question has a litter of little Mystics on the way. Supposedly this extra room is necessary to accommodate the second processor (c'mon, a G4 isn't that big) and more ventilation (ah-- that makes more sense). And check it out-- there's also a slot-loading CD/DVD-ROM drive just like in the current iMacs, and a larger "much improved speaker" as well.

If you're scratching your head and wondering what happened to Apple's alleged plans to hold Mystic's release until after Mac OS X's release would actually let it use both those processors in a reasonably efficient manner, c'mon, get on the stick-- there are lots of ways to explain the alleged new decision. What about that rumored symmetric multiprocessing support being added to Mac OS 9? Or maybe Apple figures some Mac geeks will want MP boxes as soon as the Mac OS X beta is available. And in any case, AppleInsider's thrown in a particularly heavy-handed disclaimer: "recent history has taught us that Apple often changes its mind in the latter weeks leading up to a product launch, where they find significant evidence that launching the new product in its current state would be unjust." Waffling just doesn't get any better than that.

For ages, Mac users have been second-class citizens when it comes to getting the latest and greatest graphics hardware. The ATI chipsets that always ship standard in Macs have never been the top of the heap, but neither are they poor enough that lots of other manufacturers have clamored for the attention of the Mac market. Things have been slowly improving, though, with 3dfx's growing commitment to support the platform, and tentative moves by NVIDIA to test the waters. Still another positive sign is that speculation on an imminent shakeup in the realm of Mac graphics has just entered the mainstream: when CNET starts talking about it, it's gone beyond the confines of the Mac community and out into the industry at large.

So why is this a good thing? Because you can't foster competition in a vacuum; if people don't know there are alternatives, there are no alternatives. Word's getting out that the Mac is a growing untapped market for third-party graphics cards. Soon we'll have more companies fighting for our money, and ATI might actually get nervous enough to start paying us some serious attention. Those guys really dropped the ball on the whole Rage 128 driver thing-- remember how crash-prone the first blue-and-white G3s were? Some people found that replacing the ATI card with a 3dfx one fixed all their crashing problems overnight. We have to assume that Apple wasn't too happy about that whole scenario, either, and with 3dfx now pushing to have its cards included as a build-to-order option at the Apple Store and NVIDIA courting Apple's OEM business, well, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Relatively speaking, of course.

Another verrrry interesting thing about this CNET article-- it quotes ATI's Mac product manager, Deanna Perkins, thusly: "Although it may seem this way, we don't have any exclusive deals [with Apple]. We won all of our contracts on an individual basis." Well, yeah... has anyone been trying to compete with ATI for Apple's a-chip-in-every-Mac business over the past several years? It's not hard to win when you're the only major player. But now that NVIDIA may be looking to take ATI's place, the fact that ATI has no exclusive contract with Apple is pretty exciting. Competition: it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. (Unless you live in Redmond, of course, in which case it's a four-letter word.)