The bees are a-buzzin', and they want to know what's up with the PowerBook. Apple recently insisted that there would be no "new hardware products" unveiled at the Apple Expo in Paris next month, but is a revised PowerBook a "new hardware product"? Even if it is, Steve didn't say a thing about no new hardware at Seybold instead, or even at a separate Apple event before then. And given that Apple just ended its "Burning Desires" PowerBook promo ten days early so that it could slash prices on the titanium wonders by $400-500 (a move with all the earmarks of a massive channel-clearing effort), many crafty Apple-watchers fully expect Steve to drive a revised PowerBook right through one of those mammoth plot holes sometime next month.

We've already mentioned cryptic auto-borne messages hinting at PowerBooks running at up to 667 MHz with a CD-RW option and disks reaching the 48 GB mark, but what of the graphics chip? Since no one's scrawled any GPU-related hints on our car yet, we've been on the fence, wondering whether Apple would stick with an underpowered ATI RAGE Mobility 128, or make the leap to nVIDIA's zippy (but power-hungry) new GeForce2 Go. The just-announced-yesterday ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, however, may be exactly what PowerBook fans have been waiting for: nVIDIA-class performance with half the power draw. And according to Mac OS Rumors, "reliable Apple sources" are insisting that ATI's new chip is indeed destined to find its way onto the motherboard of the next PowerBook-- though when we'll actually be able to buy one is reportedly still up in the air. As faithful viewer Chris notes, MOSR is decidedly undecided on when the new PowerBook will surface, because "nobody on the grapevine appears willing to read the entrails as our friends at As the Apple Turns have been known to do."

We greatly appreciate the high-profile mention over at MOSR, but reading entrails? That is so two months ago! These days all the hip and happening prognosticators such as ourselves are casting the I Ching for clarity and insight into Mac-related matters. Probing the ancient judgments of King Wen and mining the Duke of Chou's commentaries for rumor fodder is where it's at, baby. Indeed, we spent most of last night slingin' the Yin and Yang (i.e. the coins, gutterbrain; yeesh, we're just glad we didn't say anything about "manipulating yarrow stalks"), and the hexagrams say that a new PowerBook in September is darn close to being a sure thing. How else could you interpret "the powerful prince is honored with horses in large numbers"?

Sadly, the coins are steadfastly unhelpful when it comes to shedding light on the nature of the new PowerBook's graphics subsystem. We don't trust the translations of others, and we're somewhat handicapped on the interpretation front since the only Chinese we know comes out of fortune cookies ("Sesame Oil: Ma-You"), but we're pretty sure that anytime we try to discover what GPU is purring under the hood of the TiBook Rev. B, the answer we get is "A Suffusion of Yellow." Given that perplexing state of affairs, we figure we'll just wait and see-- and keep our fingers crossed for a Mobility RADEON-toting PowerBook G4/667 surfacing sometime in the next four weeks.