The nutty thing about the technology industry, as we're sure you're all aware, is that it's like a soap opera in several ways. It's not just all the crazy lawsuits, under-the-table dealings, back-room business propositions, personal attacks, and dramatic announcements-- though without those, AtAT definitely be a lot less gripping. No, it's also the pace at which the whole story moves: as with any soap opera, if you miss a few episodes, you come back to find everyone sleeping with different partners, at least two characters dead, at least three back from the dead, a couple in comas, and one that's inexplicably changed genders. (This is, of course, a metaphor; we're not implying anything about Gil Amelio's pulse rate or any exotic surgery "Bill" Gates may have undergone while overseas in the seventies.)

So it's important to stay on top of things to avoid getting left behind in the story. That's why, as the rest of us are still wondering about the Yosemite/El Capitan pro-level Power Macs that Apple is expected to unveil early next year, Mac OS Rumors is already talking about the pro machines due after those. Talk about a head start! Those machines are reportedly code-named "Sawtooth," and they may appear as early as Macworld Expo Boston next summer. As for what to expect, preliminary details hint at AltiVec-enhanced G4 processors running between 400 MHz and 1.2 GHz, three fast 66 MHz PCI slots (still no six-slot machine in the works at Apple, hmmm?), a system bus running at 100 MHz or faster, RAGE 128 graphics, a cool translucent dark blue case like El Capitan, and all starting at only $1750.

Now sure, that all sounds great, but there's a very interesting corollary to having such a fast Mac. A Rumors source at Apple hints that given AltiVec's incredible performance enhancements on top of the G4's raw speed, when it comes to Windows emulation, Great Things™ are afoot. It's still pretty speculative, but it sounds as though a mid-range Sawtooth Mac might well be able to run Windows in emulation at an "equivalent of a Pentium II 450 with decent graphics and disk performance." Whether that actually turns out to be true or not is anyone's guess, but the implications are pretty interesting. On the plus side, there would be virtually no penalty to getting a Mac, even if you had to run lots of Windows software. The downside, of course, is that such a situation might prompt software developers to write software for Windows only, since why should they spend time and money on a Mac port when Macs can run Windows anyway? As always, it's a double-edged sword. But we'd still love to see if, in a year, the fastest Mac can run Windows faster than the fastest Wintel...