The G5 saga continues, and now more than ever it's getting kind of tricky to find the line. You know the line we mean: on one side of it is the sensible town of Plausible Speculation, populated with published facts and credible insider info; on the other there's the fevered burg of Rampant Wishful Thinking, land of the pipe dream and home of the whopper. Personally, we think the latter is a far more fun place to hang out, but even we acknowledge the need for a dose of good, solid reality even now and again. The problem is, a lot of the recent G5 talk has been straddling that line, so we're never entirely sure whether we should be seriously preparing for a whole new PowerPC architecture to arrive in less than two months' time, or just getting giddy with the thrill of it.

See, the very latest buzz (as pointed out by faithful viewer HikerCA) is over at The Register, and it's a doozy: reportedly, according to the ever-popular "source close to Apple," the G5 is done. As in, complete. Finished. Ready for action. Indeed, the chip has been approved for "full-scale manufacture" and "volume production," which, if true, means that Apple's going to be swimming in G5 processors in a matter of weeks. And if that's true, then the source is probably also correct in reporting that Apple is "still on course to ship Power Mac G5 desktops at Macworld Expo San Francisco in just over a months' time." In order to have shipping product at or soon after the Stevenote, Apple is allegedly planning to start cranking out low-end G5 systems just two weeks from this Friday, with midrange systems entering production less than a week later and high-end models rolling off the assembly lines just after the new year.

Speeds are yet to be determined; Apple hopes to ship at 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 GHz, but if yields on the 1.6 GHz chips don't improve soon, the company will drop back and punt with 1.0, 1.2, and 1.4 GHz models instead. (Hey, better now than later. Remember the Great G4 Speed Dump debacle?) As for other specs of these alleged new Power Macs, as previously rumored, they'll supposedly ship with DDR RAM and a "much faster" bus, and now The Reg is hearing that they'll also come with something called "Gigawire." Odds are that's what Apple is calling the next iteration of FireWire, which doubles bandwidth to 800 Mbps. It's just a much classier name than "FireWire 2," or "Son of FireWire," or even "The FireWire Strikes Back."

So, whaddya think? Is it all just a pleasant Mac fantasy, or are we really going to see a Power Mac G5 less than six short weeks from today? We have to admit, we're really starting to believe-- and as everyone knows, a little belief is a dangerous thing. Some might say it could even jinx the whole deal. Hmmmm, maybe we should rush right out and blow six grand on a top-of-the-line G4 system; surely that would guarantee the imminent announcement of the G5, right? And if we, your humble AtAT staff, get stuck with a new G4 just to leverage the power of Murphy's Law to conjure forth a January G5 intro, well, saints that we are, that's a sacrifice that we're just going to have to make. Pity us.