It shipped! It shipped! Xtrem finally has an actual, honest-to-goodness product out the door, instead of just hype, vague hints about future greatness, and lots of pretty 3D renderings of a big microphone. That's the good news. The bad news is that, according to faithful viewer Milo Auckerman, the product in question is not the XtremMac G4/1200 MHz that put the company in the headlines several months ago, which remains "under development" (cough). Instead, the company has finally managed to ship its other product-- the MacThrust processor accelerator.

You all remember the MacThrust, right? Or maybe you don't-- since XTrem's original August 3rd press release said that the product was going to ship "by the end of July." (Evidently we're not the only ones who are messing with time travel.) Anyway, it's finally here, and Xtrem says that after a "10-minute Plug-n-Play installation" your Power Mac G3 or Yikes!-model Power Mac G4 will run 15-35% faster, all for the low, low price of $59.95. There are a few things to keep in mind, however.

The first is that the MacThrust speeds up your Mac by forcing its G3 or G4 to run at a clock speed higher than it was intended to run, a practice known as "overclocking" that carries at least some theoretical risk of damage. Secondly, as far as we can tell, the MacThrust seems to be nothing but a bunch of conveniently labelled jumper blocks that you use to tell the motherboard how fast to run the chip. If that's indeed the case (Xtrem's web site isn't exactly brimming with details), any jumper blocks should do the trick, so $60 seems a little steep for a few tiny pieces of plastic and metal. Somehow we expected some of this incredible breakthrough cooling technology that's allegedly going to let Xtrem run a standard G4 at 1200 MHz any day now, just you wait. The last thing to remember is that pulling a stunt like overclocking your Mac's processor beyond its rated speed may not nuke the chip itself, but it will immediately and irrevocably nuke any warranty you may have-- but warranties are for wusses anyway, so who cares?

If you're out of warranty (or you're just itching for a new and exciting way to void it), you can order your $60 jumper blocks at Xtrem's award-winning web site. In theory. As of broadcast time, the Xtrem Store features a message saying that the company is "receiving so many orders" that it doesn't have "the capacity to process your order at this time." But fear not; the online store "should be available again" on October 24th, which is... uh... right now. Whoops-- guess we're seeing those time-travel anomalies again.