Rumors and hearsay, that's the stuff on which we thrive. It's the non-dairy creamer in our coffee, the extra shell in our twelve-pack taco kit (True! Best thing that ever happened to us!); call it what you will, it all rocks. Especially when said rumors and hearsay are gossip about behind-the-scenes strife between two corporate giants. Nothing beats dishing the dirt on relationships gone sour, right? That's why we're tickled pink over what Mac OS Rumors is saying about IBM and Motorola. Publicly, those two companies have to keep a civil attitude, what with being all chummy in the PowerPC AIM alliance and all. But every once in a while a company rep lets something slip that shows the cracks in the shiny happy facade.

According to a Rumors source, an IBM representative recently got a little catty during a presentation of the company's RS/6000 Unix workstations. Apparently IBM's got a prototype RS/6000 with a 650 MHz G4 running at its core. Yes, you read that right: 650 MHz. We in the Mac world are drooling all over ourselves now that we can finally buy what was originally announced way back in August-- a G4/500-- while IBM's reportedly sitting on a chip that's a solid 30% faster. Sure, we understand what "prototype" means, but when this IBM rep was asked when that 650 MHz G4 would hit the market, the response was "when Motorola pulls its head out of its ass and lets us ship them." Yeek, strong words, but understandably so; apparently since the G4 (or, more properly, the PowerPC 7400) is a Motorola chip design, IBM's been put on ice until the Moto-folks can catch up. IBM's not allowed to ship a Moto chip that's faster than Moto's own implementation.

We should probably reiterate our standard "Just a rumor, folks!" warning at this time. Remember, this info appeared on a rumors site, it came from an unnamed source, and it may all be hooey-- but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining as all get-out. We love the idea that a befuddled Motorola might still be trying to break through the 500 MHz barrier, while IBM's waiting impatiently to ship the better technology. Okay, so we're not loving it as much as we'd love to see Apple shipping a G4/650, but still, it's the next best thing. And we wouldn't be quite so prone to believe Motorola could be capable of such incompetence if it weren't for the little fact that the company made the brilliant decision to ditch all its PowerPC-powered Macs in favor of Wintel systems-- a move that just screams, "We make 'em, we sell 'em, but we sure as heck wouldn't want to use 'em!" Imagine if the Coca-Cola company were to put Pepsi machines in the company cafeteria; catch our drift? With that level of stupidity involved, anything's possible...