Happy July! And what a July it's already turning out to be; after a June that was plagued with some wicked lulls in the Apple drama department, this month is shaping up to be a real thrill ride by comparison. Not only do we have Macworld Expo looming just two weeks away, but we've also got some serious heat churning up the rumor mill in anticipation of that blessed event. While many of you may already have chosen sides in the whole "new Power Macs at Expo" issue, we at AtAT are still sitting on the fence, what with the mixed signals we're getting-- so we heartily welcome all the new dirt with which July has seen fit to unload, because while it's not necessarily helping to clarify things, at least it's keeping us wildly entertained in our confusion.

Regular viewers are already aware that we ourselves managed to scare up our own optimistic hieroscopic prophesy of Expo-borne Power Macs running at speeds starting at today's high water mark of 733 MHz and reaching at high as 1 GHz. And while the soy-based goat entrail substitute we used is a terrific source with wonderful accuracy, we've been having trouble reconciling that prediction with the slew of Power Macs still left in the channel; Apple is traditionally both exceedingly thorough and painfully obvious in its attempts to clear the decks when new gear is imminent. This time around, though, not so much-- hence, our fence-sitting.

But what's this? The Naked Mole Rat rides again, spreading tales of new Power Macs code-named "Titan" just two weeks away from their fresh-faced debut; there's no mention of gigahertz in his trademark ramblings, though at least "866 MHz" is mentioned. (We've heard tell of a range breakdown like this: 733 MHz, 866 MHz, 933 MHz, and 1 GHz. So maybe the Rat's just suffering from a touch of tunnel vision.) Possibly more interesting is the claim that Titan sports a "redesigned front panel"-- not a whole new enclosure, you'll note, which we personally don't expect until the rise of the Power Mac G5 next year-- including "curvaceous new drive bays and a bodacious new speaker."

And for still more dirt weighing heavily on the "yes" side of the argument, faithful viewer Adam Younker notes that Mac Rumors has posted a note from an alleged CompUSA employee who just noticed that a whole slew of current Macs has received new source codes in the retail giant's inventory system. If true, this means that "at least one of the iMacs of each speed, all of the Power Mac G4s, and all of the Cubes" are now designated "-N01," reportedly the code for items no longer carried. There's plenty of good Expo juice to be squeezed from that: new iMacs, as everyone guessed; the death of the Cube (or a new model, but we're not holding our breath); and still more evidence that new Power Macs are just around the corner. (By the way, note the absence of the PowerBook from that list of discontinued Macs. We're still figuring on a September update for Apple's pro portable line.)

There certainly is a ton of evidence that new Power Macs are just weeks away; all we can figure is that Apple has come up with some intriguing plan to deal with the systems still clogging the channel. Given the fact that plenty of the existing 733 MHz Power Macs have thousand-dollar SuperDrives in them, we just can't see Apple repricing them and turning them into entry-level models. Maybe Steve's got some new scheme up his sleeve whereby resellers can send unsold merchandise back in exchange for the new models, and Apple would then unload the older gear via the newly-empty Special Deals section at the Apple Store. Or maybe Apple will just stick resellers with the unsold stuff, inciting mass riots and total mayhem. In any event, it looks like we've got one wild and wacky month ahead of us...