For those of you who missed that "Total Distraction: The Making of AtAT" special on HBO a few months back (ed. note: that may actually have been a massive delusion on our part), allow us to let you in on a little behind-the-scenes fact: AtAT's primary production Mac isn't technically a Mac at all. It is, in fact, a terribly beige and nasty Wintel-looking Power Computing system. Remember those guys? "We're Fighting Back For Mac (By Cannibalizing Apple's Existing Sales)!"? Power Computing collapsed many years ago following the end of the Clone Wars, and since then our PowerTower Pro has become more and more of a high-tech graveyard. In addition to having been made by a company now out of business, it houses a G3 upgrade made by Newer Technology (R.I.P.) and a graphics card made by 3dfx (hey, is anyone still in business these days?).

Anyway, we're a little tired of limping along on a four-and-a-half-year-old system (particularly one that can't play Alice if its life depended on it), so recently we decided to bite the bullet and step bravely into the current century. But of course it had to happen; no sooner do we finally earmark some funds to replace our ancient production workhorse with a state-of-the-art Power Mac G4 when word gets out that the state of the art is about to change drastically sometime within the next few months. As faithful viewer Sam Carr first pointed out, The Register has a whopping great exclusive on the G4's eventual successor to the PowerPC throne: the long-awaited G5.

According to The Register's "sources said to be close to Apple" (now there's a ringing endorsement of authenticity if ever we've heard one), the first G5 design was "taped out" last week and will soon enter the volume production phase at initial clock speeds of up to 1.6 GHz. We can hear you from here: "What, only?!" Sadly, yes; reportedly Motorola has the G5 running as fast as 2 GHz in the lab, but we mere mortals will have to make do with 1.6 GHz to start. Under the hood, we're looking at a ten-stage pipeline (up from seven in the current G4s, but still a lot less ridiculous than the Pentium 4's twenty), silicon-on-insulator technology, a 400 MHz frontside bus, and full 64-bit goodness inside. If those "sources" can be trusted, Apple's pushing hard to announce the Power Mac G5 at January's Macworld Expo and ship the first units in February. In other words, we're looking at a whole new level of performance in four to six months' time.

Now, lest ye be tempted to put off getting that G4 you were looking to buy next week in hopes of scoring a G5 in January instead, keep in mind that with few notable exceptions (i.e. don't buy a new Mac the week before a Macworld Expo), delaying Mac purchases due to rumors of the Next Big Thing is generally a losing proposition. Given how long we've managed to put off upgrading, it's tempting for us to say, "hey, what's another four months?" and save up for a G5 instead. But keep in mind that we are talking about Motorola, here-- not always the horse to bet on as far as processor development timetables are concerned-- and it's a rumor about Motorola, at that. In fact, as faithful viewer The M@d H@tter notes, even Mac OS Rumors is skeptical of certain points in The Register's report.

So unless something drastic happens to change our minds, we ought to be Quicksilver-enabled sometime next month. After all, what are we supposed to do, sit on this copy of Alice for half a year? Oh, and, uh, our work is suffering greatly because our current system is outdated. Yeah, that's the ticket...