Dying of thirst for more megahertz? Well, drink deeply; yesterday saw the end of an eighteen-month-long dry spell in the quest for higher clock speeds. Much to our surprise and delight, CNET's original report that Steve would take the wraps off of a 733 MHz Power Mac G4 turned out to be right on the money-- and that's a really good thing, since we were losing the battle to keep our expectations down to the "dual-processor 600 MHz" level. Finally, our salvation: four new desktop models, with G4s running at 466, 533, 667, and 733 MHz. (That "667" annoys us slightly; clearly this isn't the same Apple who sold its original personal computer for $666 just to raise eyebrows. Where's the love?) Sure, they're all single-processor systems (though you can get a dual-processor 533 MHz model built to order at the Apple Store), but with 733 MHz finally in the picture, we're finding it tough to get bummed about the whole downplayed multiprocessing thing.

We're not at the oasis quite yet, though. You may have noticed from Apple's newly-posted tech specs that both the 667 and the 733 MHz models list 256K of on-chip cache running 1:1 with the chip speed. That's a dead giveaway that those higher models are using Motorola's new G4e chip (or G4+, or whatever you want to call it). No wonder the 466 and 533 MHz models are "available now" while the faster ones are due out "next month." Color us overcautious, but we're going to try to dampen our enthusiasm until the G4e-based Power Macs are actually shipping; we all got burned the last time Steve announced higher-speed configurations shipping "soon." Remember the original Power Mac G4/500? It was announced in, what, August of 1999? And due to lack of availability from Moto, Apple had to scale the whole G4 line back by 50 MHz and much wailing and caterwauling ensued. The 500 MHz G4 didn't actually ship until February of the following year, by which time countless legions of Mac fans had already taken their lives in desperation.

So, given that little slice of History Heaven, we're trying really, really hard to remain stoic about the possibility of replacing our four-year-old PowerTower Pro with a G4/733 next month. So far, so good: adrenaline levels are low, heart rates are normal, and we're only drooling slightly more than usual. If we can keep this up, in the unhappy eventuality that Apple is forced to admit that the 733 won't actually ship until, say, July, we'll remain cool as a cucumber, with nary a myocardial infarction in sight. And with all the other, far-less-relaxed customers dropping like flies of strokes and embolisms and the like when told they'll have to wait another five months, we bet we'll have a much easier time getting our Zen-steadied hands on a system. As for a delayed ship date affecting Apple's standing in the Megahertz Wars, fear not-- as we all know, in that game it's not what you ship, but what you announce.