Enough negativity and wanton Motorola-bashing! On to the positive vibes, because after all, clock speed issues aside (yeah, marketing's important, but it's not everything), the G4 we've been enjoying as a community for the past year is actually still one seriously smokin' chip. And in the case of the dual-processor Power Macs, they're two seriously smokin' chips. Plus, we're sure those Motorola people are working like dogs to bring us ever-faster processors, and we feel bad that they often go so unappreciated-- or, more often than not, reviled. So we're happy to pass along some good news for a change.

Here we go: according to The Register, the PowerPC G4 Plus is "taped out." As in, done. Finished. Ready for production. And don't go confusing the G4 Plus with that low-power 7410 G4 that Motorola just announced to a livid world a couple of days ago; the G4 Plus is a whole different beast. Basically, it's another desktop version of the same old G4 chip we all know and love which has been "enhanced" in various lip-smacking ways. For one thing (and probably most importantly to those afflicted with clock speed envy), it boasts a longer instruction pipeline, which should allow it to debut at speeds of 700 MHz or higher. It also features a 1:1 on-chip L2 cache, "three extra AltiVec engines, and two more integer units," all of which ought to increase performance significantly beyond the gain that a simple clock speed boost would yield. Okay, so it's no 1.5 GHz, but it's solid progress nonetheless.

Now, here's the catch (because there's always a catch): just because the G4 Plus is "done" doesn't mean it's actually available. Motorola has reportedly seeded a few units of "initial silicon" to Apple so Steve's minions can start working on integrating the new chip into actual Macs, but that could be a long process. In addition, Motorola's got to figure out how to produce the things in reasonable yields; no one wants a repeat of last year's infamous "G4 Speed Dump" fiasco if G4 Plus chips turn out to be scarcer than scarce. In fact, one hopefully over-cautious Motorola source has estimated that we won't be able to buy Macs running the G4 Plus until "mid-summer 2001."

Now here's the part where we maintain a positive tone and cheerily caution Motorola that if Apple is stuck at 500 or 550 MHz for nine or ten more months (the likelihood of quad-processor Power Macs aside), we imagine that some of the more excitable elements of the Mac community at large might just possibly trot on down to Motorola headquarters to round up as many high-level executives as possible and administer a savage beat-down. In a very upbeat manner, of course. Have a nice day!