Well, if there were ever a doubt in our minds that ongoing PowerBook delays were caused by some catastrophic external factor beyond Apple's control, said doubt has long since evaporated and left behind a crusty residue of bitterness and defeat. Because when we say "ongoing," what we really mean is "going on-- and on, and on, and on..." Consider this: the 12- and 17-inch PowerBooks were introduced on January 7th, making them nearly eight months old. In high tech terms, that's older than dirt. But what about the 15-incher, which is still wearing titanium (oh, how gauche) and doesn't even support AirPort Extreme yet? That sucker hasn't been touched since November 7th, making it almost ten months old, and therefore older than dirt's Grampy Jessup.

Indeed, when it's been so long between product refreshes that even non-Applecentric publications like Forbes start to jump in on the Mac rumor game, things have clearly gotten a little out of hand. Ten months between product refreshes (when the company's average is more like six) is not Apple being "coy." In our eyes, there is no conceivable way that Apple would voluntarily have left these products alone for so long, particularly after channel-clearing price cuts way back in early June, and especially in the so-called "Year of the Notebook." Until we hear otherwise, we can now believe unflinchingly in the "Motorola never shipped the chips and thereby reduced Steve Jobs to a raving pottymouth" reports that surfaced a few weeks back.

Meanwhile, it's Tuesday-- always a primo day for new Apple products to make the scene, but it looks like we can chalk up yet another 'Bookless Tuesday before we commence our now-traditional gentle sobbing into our lunchtime soup. (weep weep sniffle sob "Mmmmmm, minestrone" blubber boo hoo) And since we're now firmly convinced that Apple can't budge until Motorola figures out where the heck it left those G4s it was supposed to mail to Apple (check behind the sofa!), any predictions as to when the PowerBooks will finally show up would actually be predictions of when Motorola might suddenly become... well, "competent" might be too harsh a word. So, "competent."

All we can hope for is that this situation doesn't degrade into a case of history repeating itself; you may recall that back in September of '99, Apple was finally forced to issue an earnings warning because it was going to miss its quarterly targets by a wide margin. Why? Because its targets included a healthy chunk of Power Mac G4 sales-- sales which never materialized because, thanks to Motorola, the chips never materialized, either. (It's nice to see so much progress in four years.) This time around Apple has the G5 to help buffer any effect of a PowerBook sales shortfall on its quarterly earnings, but any major dip is still likely to hurt; last quarter PowerBooks sales were up 71% from the same quarter last year, but now there basically aren't any PowerBooks left to sell.

Then again, an earnings warning and the ensuing stock plummet is always good for at least a solid week's worth of drama, so we're covered either way. Especially since, if the protracted scarcity of new G4 processors will nuke Apple's quarterly revenue badly enough to warrant an earnings warning, you just know Uncle Steve's going to pay a little visit to Motorola headquarters with a big, scary axe.

Personally, we have a feeling that these long-rumored PowerBook updates (when they finally surface in the year 2525) will be minor enough-- yes, even the 15-incher's induction into the Hall of Aluminum-- that normally they'd probably just get a press release; we doubt they'd warrant the full-blown Steve treatment what with the "one more thing" and the products magically rising out of the stage floor and the intro video with Jon Ive and Phil Schiller and whichever random celebrity Apple was able to lure into the studio that day with a Twinkie on a string. That sort of stuff is usually reserved for the big changes: new enclosures, new processors, an all-new menu with a wider selection of appetizers (try the Blooming Onion!), etc.

However, given that the term "noodle juice" was still in widespread use the last time these products were refreshed, circumstances might necessitate a little more of a to-do, just to get the new gear back into the public eye. A Stevenote might be just the ticket-- and, as faithful viewer Michael McKinney pointed out, Macworld UK reports that El Stevo will indeed be handling his usual keynote duties at Paris's Apple Expo in three weeks' time. (This shouldn't come as any particular surprise, since we're pretty sure he's done every Apple Expo keynote since at least 1998, but the fact that every Mac site on the planet is reporting this as if it were some sort of mindblowing revelation just shows how slow the news has been this week.)

Anyway, if your spirit hasn't been so crushed underfoot that you can still assume that new PowerBooks just might be ready sometime within the next three weeks, Apple Expo might indeed be an ideal venue at which to cry havoc and let slip the 'Books of war. Granted, it's slightly uncommon for Apple to introduce new hardware at the Paris show (heck, a couple of years ago the company even sent out a press release warning fans not to get their hopes up), but it has happened before; remember the bigger-disk Pismos and the FireWire iBooks in 2000? So, provided that Motorola will have finally figured out how to make more than one G4 processor at a time by then (to Motorola's credit, not many companies take the time and care to whittle each chip by hand anymore), Steve might have a new trio of PowerBooks to trot out in Paris. In fact, while he's at it, why not intro the speed-bumped iMacs as well? And the G5 Xserve?

Aw, heck... it's the City of Lights, so we say Apple should just update everything for one massive Paris blowout. Dual-processor eMacs! iBooks with 17-inch screens! Anodized Power Macs in Think Pink, Electric Blue, and Mr. Yuck Green! iPods that can be fitted nasally! C'mon, Apple, you've got three whole weeks; how hard can it be?

Whoa whoa whoa, just take two steps back, there, Eustace. We could handle the rumors that Apple might actually try to make inroads into the enterprise market that consisted of more than a clever slogan. We even avoided a stroke (albeit narrowly) when at least some of the rumors turned out to be true and Apple unveiled the rack-mountable, we-mean-business Xserve. But, seriously, how are we supposed to react to Think Secret's claim that "Apple has formed a new Enterprise division aimed at courting corporate buyers"? A whole freakin' division? Pardon us for saying so, but this is not the act of a company who goes at the enterprise market half-assed. Who are these people, and what have they done with the real Apple?

Okay, sure, we've been preparing for this possibility at least slightly for years, now, since it wasn't hard to imagine that once it had matured a little, Mac OS X and its UNIX guts might well appeal to some factions in big business. But to hear that Apple is actually dedicating manpower to increasing its presence in the enterprise market, well, somehow it still comes as a shock. Apparently this secret subterranean race known as the "Enterprise Sales Group" consists of sixteen employees with a "former enterprise industry executive" as its leader, and once the team is done "quietly gearing up operations," Apple may well bring it forth into the light of day. In the meantime, they've already launched a guerilla campaign to get more Macs into big corporations; reportedly individual sales force reps have been calling up potential customers and offering them "the attention [they] deserve as... enterprise customer[s]," including lower prices and higher priority shipping.

Granted, sixteen employees aren't likely to pull in any gigantico-huge Fortune 500 accounts that order two thousand G5s every other month, but it's an uncharacteristically earnest move on Apple's part as far as a push into enterprise is concerned. And we get the sense that Apple realizes that baby steps are necessary; any massive leap into the enterprise market (which traditionally views Apple as a purveyor of "those expensive toys that the freaks in Graphic Design play with while the rest of us get real work done, consarn it") is likely doomed to failure. Still, if these sixteen brave souls are successful at insinuating themselves into several well-placed corporations (and reportedly they're already "exceeding expectations"), who's to say that next year they won't number thirty-two? And 100 in 2005?

Apple courting enterprise: creepy stuff. What's next, Apple going after hardcore gamers? (Now that would give us a stroke.)