Well, nurtz-- after about four years of dependable service, it may be time to let our beloved Pismo-class PowerBook G3 run out the rest of its days grazing serenely in a pasture or studding to sire new little PowerBooklets or something. It was a handy and capable machine under Mac OS 9, but the latest versions of Mac OS X really push it to its limits; upping its RAM to 576 MB a few years back helped immensely, but Quartz Extreme is a no-go on its 8 MB ATI RAGE 128 video subsystem, and its 400 MHz G3 can't pump the pixels like Mac OS X wants it to, nor can it reasonably support later technologies like video conferencing in iChat AV or software instruments in GarageBand. What's more, its 6 GB hard drive is so cramped we can't keep more than a couple of apps open at once without klaxons going off and red lights flashing a "LOW DISK SPACE" warning. The final straw is that its battery capacity, which has been steadily dwindling for ages, has finally hit El Zilcho; the PowerBook doesn't even recognize the battery as a battery anymore, which means we might as well be using that battery bay to store mashed potatoes or an emergency sock.

Now, sure, we could replace the battery with a new high-capacity model from Newer Technology, and we could replace that 6 GB hard drive with a slightly less pathetically-sized one, and while we're at it we could even upgrade the processor to a 500 MHz G4-- but by the time we'd be finished, we'd have blown about 600 clams and we'd still be stuck with that 8 MB video system, not to mention the curvy black plastic of yesteryear. So it seems to us that the smart thing to do would be to put our money into a whole new PowerBook, which would upgrade everything at once. That's a decent rationalization to spend a couple of grand, right? Right?

So we're keeping our fingers crossed on a long shot: that new PowerBooks will touch down soon, and maybe-- just maybe-- as early as tomorrow. Faithful viewer David Triska tipped us off to a Think Secret article which insists that "an Apple product announcement will be arriving early this week, either Monday or Tuesday," and there was at least one rumor making the rounds a while ago about refreshed PowerBooks getting geared up for a quiet debut. Like we said, though, it's sort of a long shot, since the smart money's on this "product announcement" actually being the revamped iBooks that MacGadget had predicted for an October 19th intro sometime last week; in fact, some dealers reportedly already have the new iBooks in stock and are just waiting for Apple's go-ahead to put 'em out on the shelves.

While a new iBook would certainly still be a healthy step up from our four-year-old PowerBook with a sock for a battery, we're not sure we'd feel comfortable going that route; that whole "kitchen appliance" vibe gives us the heebie-jeebies. But if you aren't allergic to shiny white plastic and you're in the market for a consumer Mac that you can transport without detailed instructions, Tuesday ought to be a good day for you; MacRumors has "confirmed" specs on the new iBooks, and the entry-level 12-incher with a 1.2 GHz G4, a 30 GB hard disk, and a combo drive will reportedly sell for a disgustingly low $999. Bump the screen up to the 14-inch model, pop the processor to 1.33 GHz, and double the hard drive to 60 GB for just $300 more, and if you really want to get jiggy wit' it, add another $200 to replace that combo drive with a SuperDrive. That's $1,499 for the top-of-the-line-- and did we mention that AirPort Extreme will apparently come standard in all three configs?

As for other new gear making an appearance tomorrow, apparently there'll be a new low-end Power Mac G5-- a single-processor model running at 1.8 GHz with an 80 GB hard drive, a GeForce FX 5200, and a SuperDrive for the low, low price of just $1,499. (MacRumors notes that's the same price for an iMac packing the exact same processor, which includes the 17-inch LCD screen for free; there's no SuperDrive, though, and far less expandability-- and there's that whole white-plastic-vs.-aluminum thing, too, of course.) There appears to be exactly zero word on the possibility of updated PowerBooks showing up tomorrow, too, which is why the term "long shot" presented itself so readily, but heck, we'll keep our fingers crossed anyway. Perhaps the universe will take pity on our desperate desire to part with a large wad of cash.

While Tuesday's iBook updates will no doubt be a quiet affair (no media circus, just a press release-- if that), apparently Apple has something a little spicier on deck for next week. CNET reports that the company "has scheduled a special event" for next Tuesday at the California Theater in San Jose. Invitations went out to the press (the real press; we don't count) announcing that "Steve Jobs, Bono, and The Edge invite you to a special event" and providing, as usual, absolutely squat in terms of what said "special event" might actually be about. But since Bono and The Edge are currently starring as silhouettes in Apple's latest iPod + iTunes TV commercial and Apple has already announced that it'd be doing more with U2 than just sticking them in an ad and selling their music at the iTunes Music Store, you can bet that some music-related hijinks are in the offing.

So what's it going to be then, eh? Could this be the debut of the long-rumored 60 GB iPod with a color screen, a video-out port, and a built-in lithotripter to tackle those pesky kidney stones that make rocking out such a grind? Or will it be nothing more than an announcement of Apple's new pan-European iTMS, which the company said just last week is still on track for a launch this month? (Yes, we realize that a Euro-iTMS launch would make a lot more sense in, say, Europe, but remember, Steve's probably still a little hurty after his surgery, so we wouldn't be at all surprised if he wants to stay put for a while.)

Well, one media outlet claiming to have the goods on what next week's Bono-fied, Edge-tacular Apple event is all about is, of all sources, Forbes. It claims that in a week Apple will launch a special U2-edition iPod, done up in classy black and "preloaded with the band's new album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, along with portions of the Irish supergroup's 25-year catalogue." If the report's correct, then Apple's getting a jump on the rush, because these U2Pods will supposedly ship when the band's album does: November 23rd. We imagine Apple wants to stretch out the pre-order frenzy a bit so it doesn't get too stomped-on by the imminent swarm of fevered holiday consumers.

If Forbes's sources are right, then we imagine that the Beatles' lawyers suddenly just got a whole lot busier; remember, Apple's allowed to slap its trademark on electronic and computer equipment that delivers music, but it's forbidden to use it "on or in connection with physical media delivering pre-recorded content." Okay, so it's not exactly a "compact disc of the Rolling Stones' music," as the Apple-Beatles agreement used as an example of the whole "physical media, pre-recorded content" thing. Still, as faithful viewer Matt Overton points out, an iPod sold with U2's music already preinstalled isn't too far off. (As far as the contract goes, we mean; we certainly aren't saying that U2 is anywhere near as cool as the Stones, as evidenced by the fact that we weren't just struck by lightning.)

Would Apple risk such a legally shaky maneuver? We can't say, but relax; whatever the company's got lined up, we'll know in a week. Until then, just keep watching the skies...

So have you been following all this CherryOS goofiness over the course of the past couple of weeks? We haven't mentioned it here before this, in part because we'd already incorporated the "Mac emulator running on Windows" plotline once last spring, and we figured that recycling a plot that soon would be tacky. But what we were really waiting for was some real and credible testimony about whether CherryOS is legit in its lofty claims of emulating a Mac at 80 percent of the hardware's native Wintel speed-- and boy, are we glad we waited, because what we got instead was a veritable treasure trove of drama and intrigue that could melt the tusks off a walrus at twenty paces. You gotta love it when the players write the play for you, too...

Just to bring you up to speed, a few weeks ago, some company calling itself Maui X-Stream officially announced CherryOS, what it claimed was a $50 application that could let Wintel boxes run Mac OS X in emulation as a process within Windows at roughly 80 percent of "normal" speeds. Furthermore, the company said it was working on a version that could boot an x86 box without any additional operating system, meaning you'd eventually be able to buy a cheap Wintel clone, install a $50 copy of CherryOS and a $129 copy of Mac OS X, and bickety-bam: you'd have the crappiest, ugliest Mac you've ever laid eyes on. But it'd be cheap, dagnabbit, and that's all some people care about.

But is CherryOS all it's cracked up to be? Not if you believe the buzz which insists that it's nothing but a hoax. We've yet to hear from anyone who's successfully gotten CherryOS running any version of Mac OS X on any Wintel setup, mostly because no one's even managed to download the product; while it was supposedly downloadable as a 1.0 release, now it's described as "a beta release for selected users"-- and the site's down even as we write this. Mac OS Rumors claims to have spoken with five people who have the beta, and none of them (including a hotshot developer at Apple) was able to get it working with any version of Mac OS X on any Wintel setup.

And it just gets worse (or better, depending on your perspective): faithful viewer Mark Whybird notes a WIRED article in which a systems engineer at the University of Wisconsin poked through the CherryOS beta and discovered that it's apparently little more than a repackaging of PearPC, the cool but dog-slow open source Mac emulator that we told you about the last time we used the "Mac emulator running on Windows" plot (and which can even be used to get Mac OS X running on an Xbox, albeit at speeds that make snails tap their watches and sigh pointedly in exasperation).

PearPC developers have publicly claimed that there's plenty of PearPC code in CherryOS, which is easily noticeable by a quick examination of variable names, which are, in many places, completely identical. Interestingly, CherryOS's single developer, Arben Kryeziu, denies having used any PearPC code whatsoever, and claims that "there are some functionalities that can only be done a certain way. Names are going to be similar or identical because there are only certain ways to do things." Fair enough-- except that one of the variable names found in both PearPC and CherryOS is "SPIRO MULTIMAX 3000," a nonsense term that PearPC's lead programmer made up. It's hard to imagine how Arben could have come up with that identical variable name all on his lonesome.

Still, Arben insists that the product is legit and that it's 100 percent free of any and all PearPC code, and he claims that he'll prove it by showing his source code to the PearPC developers "when the first public release is ready" in a few days' time. Personally, at this point we think that's probably about as likely to happen as invading alien forces changing the oil in our car, but hey, we're always happy for a chance to have our faith in humanity restored. Not that those chances ever come through, mind you, but it's the thought that counts, you know?