You know, there's something else kind of interesting about Steve's Seybold keynote yesterday; despite the fact that Seybold's focus is on graphics professionals, there was a noticeable lack of news about graphics hardware for the Mac. Oh, sure, Steve made passing references to the "fast graphics" built in to every shipping professional Mac, but never once did he mention them by name-- there were no references to the ATI Rage 128 Pro in the Power Mac and Cube, nor was the word "Radeon" uttered even once.

Interpret that how you will. One possibility is that Steve didn't want to say that the Rage 128 Pro is used in current Macs because Apple plans on replacing them soon-- with the Radeon, which perhaps still isn't quite ready for an onstage demo. (Or maybe Steve's still miffed at ATI for wrecking his Expo surprises last month.) Even more intriguing is the possibility that ATI's on the way out completely, due to some combination of poor performance and an inability to keep corporate secrets; if you want to crawl way out on the Limb of Wild Speculation, you might even think that Steve's reluctance to mention ATI in public is due to a new OEM deal in the works with NVIDIA, who's been making baby steps into the Mac market lately. Or maybe it's 3dfx, instead, whose latest cards are available for the Mac and racking up huge points with users tired of ATI's mediocre performance and notoriously buggy drivers.

Oops-- hang on. Apparently the wonderful world of patent litigation might throw a wrench into the glorious dream of serious competition in the Mac graphics arena. According to Semiconductor Business News, NVIDIA has just sued 3dfx, alleging that the VSA-100 chip used in 3dfx's latest Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 cards infringes five NVIDIA patents. 3dfx's response? In a press release, the company states that "NVIDIA's filing of a suit is clearly an attempt to force a settlement of our existing patent infringement lawsuit against NVIDIA, and we believe [it] demonstrates a lack of confidence in their current defense."

Duelling lawsuits! What could be more fun? Well, except for maybe both NVIDIA and 3dfx not being distracted by lawsuits and instead channeling all their energy into fighting for Apple's lucrative OEM business by cranking out incredible new graphics cards for the Mac-- thus forcing ATI to get on the stick, too, and leading to a massive three-way no-holds-barred cage match (graphically speaking). Here's hoping those legal differences get settled quickly, because an injunction barring the further sale of Voodoo5 cards could really get unpleasant-- for 3dfx and graphics-hungry Mac users alike.