Pismo's imminent, we're told-- due any day now. And it's about damn time, too, given how long the PowerBook's been waiting for a refresh. But what about Apple's other product lines? The iBook's still going great guns in its current configuration, so even though a Graphite iBook DV is all the rage in the rumor circles, we're not expecting it anytime soon. A new iMac? Well, there's that 17"-screen mutant we keep hearing about, but again, we haven't any strong feeling on when-- or if-- it'll ever surface. Which brings us to the Power Mac. The G4 premiered last August to much fanfare and good press, but serious availability problems soon cast what we can only describe as an "icy pall" on what should have been a spectacular product introduction. And then there was that infamous "speed dump," dropping the clock speeds of the whole line by 50 MHz because the high-end 500 MHz chips were harder to find than a bellybutton on "I Dream of Jeannie."

Ever since then, we've been waiting for G4 chip availability to improve to the point where Apple could finally announce a speed increase-- at least back to the originally-announced levels of 400, 450, and 500 MHz. Foolishly, we expected such an announcement back at last month's Macworld Expo, eternal optimists that we are, and of course we were piteously disappointed. Since then, sites such as AppleInsider have painted a bleak picture of the G4 situation; reportedly Apple's total cache of 500 MHz G4 processors numbers in the neighborhood of 10,000 or so, which is apparently not quite enough to let them announce and ship G4/500 systems.

Or is it? Several faithful viewers who buy lots of Macs at once are reporting that their dealers are putting the brakes on G4 orders. And some of these dealers have loose enough lips to state the reason: a planned "speed bump" of the G4 line in one week. Truth or wishful thinking? Heck, we figure it's not out of the question; after all, AppleInsider's figure of 10,000 G4 processors may be inaccurate, or perhaps Motorola's kicked out the jams since then and found a way to produce 500 MHz G4s at a rate quicker than the original pace, which we've since christened "Anesthetized Slug." So we're going to wait and see if, perhaps at Macworld Expo Tokyo, Steve takes a fantabulous time trip back to last August, and once again announces brand spankin' new Power Mac G4s-- running at 400, 450, and 500 MHz. Charge the flux capacitors!