Ah, the age-old scuffle we lovingly refer to as "Slot Wars"; Apple ships fewer PCI slots to keep costs down and margins up, while a tiny but important (and very, very vocal) minority screams for more expansion room. See, back in the day, Apple sold Macs with the 9xxx chassis, which boasted a respectable six slots. But then, with the advent of the original beige Power Mac G3, suddenly professional users found themselves cut to a measly three-slot allowance. Pop in a high-performance video card, add a professional video-capture card, snap in an Ultra SCSI interface, and one question rears its ugly head: "Now where do I stick this second video card?"

By ignoring the cries for more slots for all those years, Apple told its pro users exactly where to stick that second video card, though not in so many words. But things have been slowly getting better over time; the first AGP Power Macs had respectable video cards in their AGP slots, thus leaving all three PCI slots open for use. And Apple's latest Power Mac G4 systems actually boast an AGP slot and four PCI slots, which alleviates even more of the pressure. But even four slots aren't enough for demanding users in certain fields. They've got cards galore, and they need someplace to jam them.

Cue another hoary old rumor to rise from the dead! Faithful viewers Johnny and CodeBitch wrote us from MacEdition to inform us that the Naked Mole Rat has finally emerged from hibernation. Strange things came to him in his dreams-- including a vision of "Thing 2," an "Apple-branded expansion chassis aimed at opening up the options available to owners of PowerBook G4 laptop and Power Mac G4 systems." Dare we assume that "Thing 2" is Apple's long-awaited external six-slot PCI expansion chassis we've all been hearing about since the Rat's previous incarnation as a certain edged implement who dished dirt at a certain now-defunct periodical? If so, come this summer, pro users may indeed soon have slots coming out of their ears, so to speak-- and if PowerBook users will also be able to share in the wealth, well, the more the merrier.