See, we always knew that the PowerPC would prevail in the long run. While Intel is still crawling along with its outdated and overtorqued CISC architecture, the PPC is reaping the blistering speed advantages of RISC. Oh, sure, things looked a little bleak for a while, there, what with competing x86 chipsets reaching 1.5 GHz and all... especially with the G4 stalled at a seemingly miserable 500 MHz for over a year now. Apple was forced to ship a dual-G4 Power Mac before it even had a publicly-available multiprocessing operating system, simply to counter the 1 GHz marketing threat. After word of the 1.5 GHz Pentium got out, we kept checking Apple's site for an announcement of a deliciously asymmetric triple-processor Mac, just to keep up with the Wintel-buying Joneses.

But worry no more! Because Motorola has finally broken out of its year-long rut and has announced a new PowerPC chip. Faithful viewer Matt Wolanski breathlessly presented us with Motorola's official press release, in which the company introduces the new MPC7410-- a tweaked G4 "designed for high-performance, high-bandwidth applications." This sucker is the Mac's salvation in the Megahertz Wars, people; it's available in speeds of 400, 450, 500, and industry-flattening 550 MHz. Rejoice, for our platform's fastest clock speed is no longer a mere third of the fastest Intel iron. Now the ratio's a much healthier 36.7%.

Or rather, it will be. Because the 400, 450, and 500 MHz chips are available now, while the mind-numbing new 550 MHz version is "expected to be available soon." Hopefully when Motorola says "soon," the company is using the definition familiar to us English-speaking earthlings, and not the word "sünn," which, in the alien language of Uncle Steve's home planet, translates roughly as "after a delay whose length is calculated to annoy over half of the interested populace to the point of cardiovascular distress." (If you've ever wondered why you can never seem to buy the new stuff that Steve says is "available immediately," it's because "uvAAlebll eemEEdyytlee" in Steve's native tongue actually translates as "order away, you gullible peons-- we love to watch you squirm.")

Anyway, AtAT would like to extend hearty congrats to Motorola for finally breaking through that 500 MHz barrier that the rest of the industry has found so daunting. And for those of you more enlightened folks for whom clock speed isn't everything, it's worth noting that the new 7410 flavor of G4 is targeted at the embedded systems market-- meaning that its killer feature isn't its clock speed (well, duh) but its almost ridiculously low power consumption. Would you want a power-sucking Pentium 4 draining all the wattage in your CyberFridge? Of course not. So the new 550 MHz G4 (when it ships) will pull only six watts, compared to a Pentium's eleventy-kajillion. Okay, so you don't give a flying patoot about smart kitchen appliances... but Motorola's latest advance, while not exactly the toast of the town when it comes to clock speed, removes the biggest roadblock from Apple's plans to introduce a supercomputer-to-go. PowerBook G4, here we come...

Okay, so most of you aren't overly impressed by Motorola's latest G4 breakthrough. And who can blame you? We live in a society that conditions us to place "bigger" and "faster" above concerns like "more efficient" or "environmentally friendly." Mac users at large are upset at the new G4's 550 MHz ceiling (despite its incredibly efficient power consumption) for the same reason that everyone's buying SUVs that are the size of the average single-family home and get three gallons per mile. Even the fact that the new 7410 chip should allow Apple to ship a PowerBook G4 that's both faster and more battery-efficient than anything the Wintel world has to offer is scant comfort to those for whom a GHz speed gap is simply too vast a chasm to accept. And we understand that-- after all, we find the difference in clock speeds absurd, too. Who wouldn't?

So, as usual, we have to look to the future for hope that someday the gulf will narrow instead of widening. Faithful viewer Joe pointed out a MacWEEK article which discusses Motorola's "revised" PowerPC roadmap, which the company introduced alongside the new 7410 G4. It sounds like the G4 architecture has plenty of life left in it (after all, it's not as if Motorola's really been pushing it that hard, right?) and future G4s will move from the 7410's new .18 micron manufacturing process to an even teenier .15 micron fabrication method. In addition, those future G4s will benefit from both the copper technology used today and that silicon-on-insulator technique we've all heard so much about. The result? New G4 chips with clock speeds of "up to 1 GHz."

Now, before you mount a nuclear attack on Motorola headquarters, take a moment to reflect. Okay, so a 1 GHz G4 would have been great several months ago instead of at some unspecified point in the (probably distant) future, but the G4 isn't the end-all be-all of PowerPC development. Because the roadmap also discusses the G5, more properly known as the 75xx and 85xx series of processors, which will move to a .10 micron process and a "new instruction pipeline and bus topology" which should let the chips break the 2 GHz barrier "by the end of the G5 product's lifetime."

Now that's more like it. Now all we need is for Intel and AMD to hit a brick wall at, say, 1.6 GHz just like the one that Motorola slammed into at 500 MHz, and maybe, just maybe, the PowerPC will have the slimmest of chances of once again surpassing that old, slow CISC technology like the AIM alliance promised way back when. So there's hope. Besides, if the G5 doesn't cut it, there's also the G6-- mentioned tantalizingly briefly in Motorola's roadmap, sans any details whatsoever. Given the way things are going, though, we figure we'll be long dead of old age before a Power Mac G6 ever ships. For that matter, by the time we even get to use a G5, we'll be lucky if we still have our own teeth.

Ah-HA!! There is something going on! While we weren't thrilled with the decision itself, the very fact that the Supreme Court finally opted to delay its joining of the "Redmond Justice" cast heralded what we hoped would be a new season of wacky antitrust drama, and it appears that we were right. Faithful viewer Arthur Frame forwarded us a USA Today article which discusses the, er, noteworthy relationship between one of the Supreme Court justices and everyone's favorite monopoly-abuser from Redmond. Oh, sorry... did we say "one of" the justices? We meant William H. Rehnquist, the Chief Justice himself.

Get this: apparently Chief Justice Rehnquist has a son. And apparently that son is a lawyer. And apparently that son who is a lawyer just happens to be "working on cases in which Microsoft is being accused by competitors of illegal conduct." Coincidence? Well, okay, possibly-- since Microsoft squashes competition as routinely as most people enjoy a frosty beverage, the company's antitrust case load probably accounts for something like 60% of all the legal work in the country, so we suppose it's not out of the question. But it is suspicious. What's more, why did Chief Justice Rehnquist decide not to abstain from the vote which sent Microsoft's case back to the appellate court? After all, "federal law says judges should disqualify themselves from cases in which their child is known to have 'an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.'" It's hard to imagine that this case doesn't qualify, but Rehnquist The Elder claims that he "considered at length" whether his son's employment status warranted disqualifying himself from the vote, and decided that there was no conflict of interest. Huh. (By the way, he voted against skipping the appellate court. Surprise, surprise, surprise...)

First Justice Department Director Joel Klein suddenly announced he was stepping down this month (as reported by Reuters), and now this. Why, some overly-suspicious types might begin to get the sneaking suspicion that Microsoft's trying to buy its appeal by spreading around some of those ill-gotten gains. But that would be foolhardy and brazen; surely no entity would be so blatant as to consider such a boneheaded, chutzpah-laden tactic, except for maybe Microso-- oh. Never mind.