The PowerPC G4 processor: it's not just for breakfast anymore. Remember that oh-so-fun year and a half during which the G4 remained stuck at the 500 MHz level, as offerings from Intel and AMD punched clear through the gigahertz barrier? Happy times, right? Well, despite Apple's attempts to deflate the Megahertz Myth, people still buy computers based largely on clock speed-- and even if you ignore megahertz comparisons entirely, few Mac users would claim that Motorola has advanced the PowerPC overall at a blistering pace. Our point is that the PowerPC just isn't developing as quickly as it probably should, and the most likely reason why isn't tough to spot: no one's buying G4s but Apple.

Think about it for a second; you're Motorola, you're hurtling towards Unprofitableville at a breakneck pace, you're eventually going to have to lay off a slew of workers, and overall you've got limited resources to keep afloat. So do you invest a ton of time and money in improving a chip design that's used only by a single computer manufacturer with 5% of the desktop market? Not bloody likely. As long as Apple was the only big customer buying G4s, we just can't believe that Motorola was making G4 development a top-level, code-red, damn-the-torpedoes-and-full-speed-ahead priority. (If G4 development was a priority and it still took the company eighteen months to break 500 MHz, then Motorola was simply incompetent, and that's far, far worse. We're trying to be optimistic, here-- not to mention charitable.)

But what if the customer landscape were to change? What if another large company started buying G4 processors, thus increasing demand for what has been essentially a niche technology? Well, we're about to find out. Faithful viewer Abe J. pointed out a Motorola press release listed over at MacMinute in which the company announces that it's about to start selling 7450-class G4s to no less an industry giant than Cisco. No fooling, folks; Cisco apparently plans to stick G4s in some of its "next generation Internet routers." If they need G4s to function, we can only assume that these are some serious routers that Cisco's putting together.

So what we're hoping is that Cisco's demand will join forces with Apple's, and together, the combination of Dragon-style and Tiger-style Kung Fu will form an unstoppable force for good, driving PowerPC development forward into a new Golden Age and vanquishing the encroaching x86 darkness forever. Or something. The only potential downside is if Apple and Cisco start duking it out over who gets first dibs on the newest, fastest chips, but we're not overly concerned, because clearly Steve's signature move-- the dreaded "Neck of the Black Turtle"-- would put a serious hurt on anything Cisco has up its sleeve.