The saga continues; the seemingly neverending wait for post-500 MHz Macs finally took a quantum leap forward yesterday-- or at least a quantum baby step. For our part, we're just glad that anything happened at all. As pretty much all of us expected, Motorola officially took the wraps off some new gear yesterday at the Microprocessor Forum-- but whether the news is good or bad depends on your point of view. The happy part is this: now that the 1 GHz G4 processor has really and truly been announced (as noted in a CNET article first pointed out by faithful viewer James Ferguson), those of you who have been holding your breath for faster PowerPC chips can finally exhale. Sort of.

Before we get into the ickier side of the announcement, go ahead and roll that luscious phrase around in your mouth for a while: 1 GHz G4. The very notion is enough to make even the most jaded Mac fan well up with tears of joy. Even Motorola's code name for the processor is full of hope: Apollo. The sun god. The god of light, as well as of poetry and music. The model of "manly grace and beauty." We can hardly wait for this plucky guy to grace our platform with his artful presence.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have to. The CNET article makes no mention of any sort of release date for Apollo, and notes that Motorola spokesperson David Bearden made it clear that Apollo will be a direct descendent of the "V'Ger" G4 design. What's wrong with this picture? Well, offhand, we'd say it's the fact that the 700 MHz V'Ger was Motorola's topic at last year's Microprocessor Forum-- and the company still hasn't even shipped that yet. Worse still, Bearden didn't even give any indication of when V'ger would finally see the light of day, and according to The Register, he spoke his piece and then hightailed it out of the conference without taking a single question. (We can understand that; no one wants to have to answer questions like "Does the Somerset Design Center only hire engineers with debilitating head injuries?" and "What's it like to have no shame?")

So that's that. At this rate, next year perhaps we'll be tooling along on 700 MHz V'ger-powered Macs (if we're lucky) while Motorola introduces the 1.5 GHz "Atomic Wedgie" processor-- and Apollo will still be nowhere in sight. In the pre-announcement department, Motorola is rivalling Xtrem (those 1.2 GHz microphone people) for sheer goofiness. But at least your dad always said that waiting builds character.

As "Steve Lite" Phil Schiller delivered the opening keynote address at this week's QuickTime Live! conference yesterday, his own little surprise may not have been as flashy as a supercomputer in an eight-inch cube, but it was welcome nonetheless. Ol' Phil hooked us up with the next iteration in Apple's venerable multimedia architecture: QuickTime 5. And while this latest version doesn't introduce a killer new technology like QuickTime 4's live streaming capabilities, according to an Apple press release, it does add a slew of new features that ought to make any media junkie quiver with delight. Thrill to the rock-steady performance of "Skip Protection"! Gasp in awe at the ability to download and install plug-ins and codecs on the fly! And, perhaps most importantly of all, cackle with glee as you notice the new QuickTime Player; gone are QuickTime 4's wheel volume control, ridiculous button layout, and cumbersome Favorites drawer. (We pinched ourselves silly to make sure we weren't dreaming.)

Now, before you trip over your virtual feet rushing to download this marvelous advance in multimedia technology, we should probably mention that QuickTime 5 isn't actually available yet. According to Apple's press release, it won't be officially released until "early 2001"-- but until then, Apple's got a "Public Preview" available. Evidently the difference between a "Public Preview" and a "Public Beta" is that Apple won't charge you $29.95 for a "Preview"-- at least, not directly. The download page implies (whether correctly or not) that only "QuickTime 3 and 4 Pro" users can install the preview, and since a QuickTime Pro key costs $29.99, you might consider that the cost of early admission.

Since we do happen to have a QuickTime Pro license, we went ahead and installed the Preview. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after we ran the installer that we noticed Apple's strangely-worded fine print warning: "QuickTime 5 Public Preview will replace older versions of QuickTime, be sure write down your current QuickTime Pro key." Sure enough, when we checked our QuickTime Settings, our Pro license key was gone. Luckily we happened to have the paper license handy, so no harm done, but we still aren't sure why QuickTime 5 couldn't preserve that setting.

Anyway, so far the only differences we notice are cosmetic. QuickTime movies viewed via the web browser plug-in have Aqua-looking buttons and sliders. The new QuickTime Player basically looks and functions identically to the one that ships with the Mac OS X public beta-- right down to the Aqua window widgets. That's right; under Mac OS 9, the new QuickTime Player features the stoplight buttons that highlight with the "X", "-", and "+" when you roll the cursor over them. But if you're expecting to see the yellow button trigger the Genie effect, prepare to be sorely disappointed-- it does nothing at all. Hey, you didn't expect Apple to get the "style over substance" monkey off its back completely, did you? It's still a huge improvement over QuickTime 4's wacky interface mish-mash.

Okay, back when longtime Apple-basher Hiawatha Bray started to see the light and began writing positive articles about the Mac, we figured we'd seen it all. In fact, at the time we jokingly remarked that one day John "No One Will Ever Buy An iBook Because They're Too Girly" Dvorak would "say he bought himself a Tangerine iBook and our heads will explode." Well, our heads are still intact, but we can hear the timer on the C4 ticking away as we sit here. For as faithful viewer Tom notes, Dvorak-- that staunchest of bull-headed Apple critics-- has actually published an article called "Defending Apple." Someone call the bomb squad!

If you've finished hyperventilating and you haven't yet burst an aneurysm, it's really worth checking out the article-- for surreality value alone. Did you ever expect to see Dvorak write "fact is, Apple is getting a bum rap"? Or "the key to Apple's good-looking machines is the anomaly known as Steve Jobs... there is no denying his heightened sense of style"? And there's this gem: "Now the question remains whether the rest of the industry can follow his lead. So far the answer is no." Of course, it's not all a love-fest, and there are some criticisms of Jobs and Apple as well, but hey, Hiawatha started slowly, too.

So, cross off another line item on the list of Stuff That'll Never, Ever Happen, Even In A Million Gazillion Years: John Dvorak, the man who insisted that iMacs would flop and that iBooks were too girly to appeal to anyone except Barbie collectors, has gone on the record praising Steve Jobs's wonderful fashion sense. And if Dvorak can make that leap of taste about a computer's exterior, can a realization that Windows is ugly as sin be far behind? Sure, right now he says he wishes that Steve would "bite the bullet and do a Wintel machine," but give the man some time. He'll come around eventually...