Attention to all Mac fans who want to prolong the "G5 A-Comin' Any Day Now" pipe dream: now would be a good time to shut your eyes tightly, stick your fingers deep in your ears, and start singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" at the top of your lungs. Attention to everyone else: if you notice anyone in your immediate vicinity with closed eyes and plugged ears belting out kiddie songs, feel free to take a moment and ridicule said person and laugh uproariously, since, in such a sensory-deprived state, he or she will never know anyway. We'll wait.

Done? Okay, now that that's out of the way, here's the skinny; we didn't want to upset the True Believers, because you know how tetchy they can get, but apparently Apple has been going out of its way to stem runaway G5 Fever. While official company policy is not to comment on unreleased products, faithful viewer Brazen informs us that MacCentral scored some uncharacteristically candid talk from Apple's senior director of hardware, Greg Joswiak-- who, as his name indicates, also holds the enviable position of being the world's first sentient being cloned from the spliced DNA of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. According to Joswiak (can we just call him "Joz"?), Apple is "not planning to introduce any new CPUs at Macworld Tokyo." From the context it's pretty clear that by "CPUs" he means Macs and not just their processors, so you can all stop warming up those credit cards for that 800 MHz PowerBook you were so sure was going to touch down next month.

"Aha," you say, "but just because new CPUs won't debut at next Month's Tokyo Expo doesn't mean that they won't surface at next week's Seybold conference!" Au contraire, Slappy; when asked about possible upgrades to Apple's product line, the Joz (actually, we think we're going to go back to calling him "Joswiak" after all) offhandedly replies "as a matter of fact, we're set for some months now." That sounds to us like there won't be any new Macs until July's Expo, at the very earliest. And really, why should there be? All four of Apple's major product quadrants have received at least minor updates in the past two months. Pretty much the only products we'd expect to get revised in the next few months are supplementary ones, like maybe new displays and perhaps a more capable iPod.

As for that whole G5 thing, this was the real reason why we wanted the more sensitive among our viewers to look away: Joswiak (aw, heck... now we think we're just going to call him "Scooter") is making noises that some of the overly-optimistic set might interpret as particularly worrying: "The G4 has a long life ahead of it. There are a number of tweaks and revs that will happen to that processor over a long period of time." Yeah, that doesn't necessarily state that Apple won't be shipping Power Mac G5s alongside G4-based iMacs by July, but we think the implication is clear. Just like the way that Scooter's entire interview with MacCentral (which, no offense intended, some people consider to be second only to eNews as the closest thing to an official Apple Pravda) can best be summed up in one quick sentence: "Buy our stuff now, because nothing better will be here for ages."

Indeed, as faithful viewer William Bonde points out, The Register notes that Motorola's PowerPC roadmap shows nicely-pumped G4 variants showing up well through this time next year, so we've said it before and we'll say it again: if a Power Mac G5 appears before next January's Expo, we'll be stunned into a stupor, albeit a pleasant one. So if you've been putting off buying that new Mac because you'd been dead certain that the Next Big Thing™ is just around the corner, you may want to re-evaluate your purchasing plans in light of Apple's public admission of "we got nothin'." Oh, and can someone please prod the singing denial addicts and tell them it's safe to come back now? Ratings are ratings, after all. Thanks.

It's a time-honored staple of the rumor hound's diet, and who are we to keep your from your recommended daily allowance of unsubstantiated dirt? Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we give you today's installment of Apple's Having Another Metaphorical Slap-Fight with a Graphics Chip Manufacturer Theater. The nutritionally aware among you will no doubt recall the vast stores of hot, nourishing drama we all mined from that alleged Apple-ATI tussle a couple of years ago, when ATI accidentally let slip a few juicy nuggets about Apple's upcoming Macs in a press release a couple of days before Macworld Expo. Mmmm, we all ate well that week, didn't we?

As you're no doubt aware, more recently Apple did the same sort of thing to its new bestest graphics buddy nVIDIA-- first by shipping new Power Macs with GeForce4 MX cards before nVIDIA had thrown that chip a coming-out party, and then later by issuing a press release touting the new GeForce4 Titanium as a Power Mac build-to-order option-- exactly a day before nVIDIA was supposed to unveil that product amid much hype and hoopla. There's no question that Apple knows it screwed up; the company retracted the press release due to "incorrect information" and then reissued the same piece, unchanged, the next day. Ever since, we've been wondering if sparks are flying behind the scenes.

Well, faithful viewer David Nagler tipped us off to an unconfirmed reader submission over at Mac OS Rumors about just that sort of nail-biting tension, and since when have we ever let a little thing like credibility get in the way of a good time? Head on over for the smack on how nVIDIA's lateness with the GeForce4 prevented Apple from unveiling the new Power Macs at last month's Expo, as intended-- and how Apple subsequently slapped an ATI RADEON in its new entry-level Power Mac and made liars of nVIDIA, who were forced to remove prominent links to its press release titled "NVIDIA Graphics Technology Now Standard in all Apple Desktops." Ooooh, it's just twisted.

Now, of course, it's entirely possible that these reports are a) exaggerated, or b) outright false, but we'd be surprised if there weren't at least a little tension between nVIDIA and the Cupertino crew right now. A smidge? Frosty looks exchanged? Anything? Hmmm. Maybe it's just us...

If you're the type who fears change, brace yourself, because it's been a long time coming... or, uh, going. We're talking about "Think different," Apple's marketing slogan that first turned up on a Stevenote slide months before it finally graced the airwaves as the tag to the black and white feel-good minute of the nineties. Readers over at MacNN note that while Apple hasn't outwardly killed the phrase yet, the company has been downplaying its use lately-- what was once the rallying cry for Apple's struggle back from the brink of financial collapse is now apparently completely missing from Apple's current iMac, iBook, and PowerBook brochures. What's more, while the recent iPod commercial (and, as far as we can remember, every other Apple commercial since late 1997) finishes with the "Think different" tagline, Apple's newest iPhoto spot doesn't. Wuh-oh.

Granted, that little slogan's been worked practically to death for over four years now, so it probably deserves to be put out to stud in a sunny field somewhere, where it can live out the rest of its life happily spawning lots of little ad slogans. Still, we're sad to see it go; we've always had a soft spot for the phrase that encapsulated the Macintosh attitude and experience in just two words. And the fact that it played such a large role in Apple's rebound just makes it all the more special. What can we say? That original "Think different" ad still chokes us up-- sue us, we're old softies. Plus, despite that fact that it suggests what to think and not how to think, we always loved the way certain people went completely apoplectic over its alleged rampant ungrammaticality. We take a certain perverse delight in anything that makes teachers squirm; must be a revenge thing.

For what it's worth, "Think different" was about getting Apple back in the public eye-- it was a cry of defiance by a company on the edge of the abyss. Perhaps it's not entirely appropriate for a company that now needs to project an image not of rebellion, but of reliability and simplicity. The rebels are already on board; it's the normal folks that Apple needs to recruit now.

Old ad slogans never die, they just fade away... and Apple seems content to let "Think different" fade gracefully and without fanfare. That's for the best, we suppose, though we can't help but feel it deserves a bigger sendoff somehow. Then again, this isn't the first time we've heard that "Think different" was on the way out, so maybe it'll stick around in some form for a while, yet. Whether it does or not, though, it'll always have a home in the hearts and minds of the Crazy Ones.