You know that comedy phenomenon where something funny gets repeated over and over again? (The "What does a yellow light mean?" / "Slow down" driver's test bit from Taxi springs eagerly to mind.) You start out laughing heartily. After the third repetition, you're only chuckling. Soon you're not even smiling, because it just becomes annoying. But then something magical happens: by the force of sheer repetition, it becomes funny once more. You start laughing again, harder than ever. Your face turns red, tears of mirth stream from your eyes, your side aches with the spasms of laughter, and you can't remember ever having a better time. Well, guess what? In the Megahertz Wars, we're not there yet.

Frankly, right now we're deeply entrenched in the "annoying" stage. On the one side you've got Mac OS Rumors claiming that Motorola is almost done with its updated G4 architecture we've taken to calling the G4+, but manufacturing yields are "worse than [those of] the existing G4s." So much for the end of availability problems. And while some chips can be run at speeds as high as 900 MHz, apparently those are pretty scarce; most G4+ chips that roll off the lines "either don't work at all or only operate reliably up to about 400 MHz." 400 MHz? Hot damn! Is everyone ready for another Speed Dump? 'Cause we can't wait for Apple to announce that its new high-end model is a dual-processor G4+/400 for the same price as the current dual G4/500. The resulting riots ought to be most entertaining.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks, you've got Bloomberg reporting that Intel just showed off a working 2 GHz Pentium 4-- though the shipping version will debut at a paltry 1.4 GHz later this year. Laughing yet? Albert Yu, Intel's senior veep of the Architecture Group, claims that "the Pentium 4 is going to be the fastest desktop platform in the world." Oh, yeah? Well, we bet Apple's got Bytemarks and Photoshop benchmarks that'll prove otherwise, buddy! And that's not even counting the upcoming six-processor G4+/350!!

That's right; "sources close to Apple" tell us that rumors that the company's shopping around for a new Mac processor architecture are nothing but hokum. Apple instead plans to counter the Wintel threat by shipping massively multiprocessor systems with as many of Motorola's decreasing-clock-speed chips they can cram in the box. The hexaG4+/350 is only the beginning; by the middle of next year, look for the sixteen-processor G4++/150, and eventually a 32-processor G5/66 the size of a Buick. In the short-term, Apple is considering reintroducing Amelio-era numbered product names as a camouflage tactic; look for the new "Power Mac 2GHz" to debut any day now-- with two G4/500 chips on the motherboard. Hopefully customers will focus on the 2GHz's entirely coincidental name instead of the tech specs. Hey, who reads the small print these days, anyway? (By the way, that's the point at which we'll start laughing again.)