When she's not busy terrorizing the bozos in the browser development business, MacEdition's CodeBitch takes time out to keep us posted on the Naked Mole Rat's increasingly less infrequent returns to semi-lucid consciousness. Lo and behold, the Rat stirs-- and less than a week has passed since his last visit to Awakeville! Two updates in March, and the month's only half-over? Something tells us someone's running low on Nyquil and Percocet.

However, all that recreational self-medication may finally have taken its toll, for the Rat seems to have awoken thinking it's the middle of 1999 or something. While the rest of the world is giddy over the G4's recent ascent to 733 MHz and looks forward to its semi-imminent penetration of the gigahertz barrier (you do know that Mac OS Rumors is still saying "1 GHz by late August," right?) the Gay Blade is all agog over the G3 instead. Not that advances in the G3 architecture aren't welcome, as they're responsible for recent speed boosts in the iMac and iBook lines, but we strongly suspect that our beloved bald wonder needs to check his *NSYNC "Timberlake-A-Day" desk calendar and get with the times.

Nonetheless, the news is heartening; even as Motorola continues to improve the G4 by laying off employees at an alarming rate, IBM is reportedly hard at work on the next G3 variant-- which will take clock speeds into the 700 MHz to 1 GHz range. However, don't expect a fleet of zippier G3-based iGoods anytime soon; apparently the next G3 won't even hit beta until August, and commercial production isn't expected to commence until "the second quarter of 2002." So don't expect the G3 to beat the G4 to the Big Gig.

Oh, and as further evidence that the Rat is probably asking "is it Tuesday or June?", look no further than the info on the PowerPC 603e. (We bet that takes you back, right? Visions of StarMaxes are dancing in our heads...) It seems that, for some reason unknown to us, IBM is still producing those decidedly '90s-style chips-- perhaps for use in coffeemakers or something like that. But if you want any, you need to act quickly; last call is slated for August 31st, and production grinds to a halt at the end of the year. So if you're looking for a lifetime supply of 603es to keep your Performa 6400 running ad infinitum, get on the horn!