Sheesh, The X-Files had it wrong; Mulder's "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster shouldn't have featured a blurry photo of an alleged UFO-- it should have had a blurry photo of an alleged G5 processor, instead. (Actually, on second thought, maybe it does; for all we know, the G5 looks exactly like two pie plates taped together.) After last week's mention that we're not expecting the G5 to surface until this summer at the earliest, about a gazillion and six self-styled Deep Throats popped out of the woodwork to contribute whatever illicit bits of intel to which they were supposedly privy. Interestingly enough, despite the massive diversity of sources, pretty much all the G5 whispers fell into precisely two categories: "it's definitely coming next month" and "we'll be lucky to see it before Doggett and Reyes return for Season 10."

On the "next month" tip, various shadowy figures in trenchcoats and dark glasses insist that Apple plans to overhaul its Power Mac line with a full-fledged G5 processor at Seybold in about a month. Most of them cite leaky Apple-employed friends or relatives (or friends of relatives) as their sources for this optimistic bit of news. Meanwhile, resourceful and obsessed Lone Gunmen-like faithful viewers such as Rick Lyon continue to scour the 'net for clues; Rick himself unearthed mentions of the G5 in a site about a music application called NoteAbility and in a job listing over at Absoft. So those of you who "want to believe" now have more food for faith.

But far more shadowy trenchcoated spy-dudes with alleged connections to the leakier and/or drunker crew of the mothership insist that our instincts are correct: while we will get a new Power Mac any week now (and with the iMac encroaching well into Power Mac performance territory with a far shrimpier price tag, it doesn't take a genius to predict that), these latter informants state that, as we've long suspected, the Apollo G4, not the G5, will be steering the ship. Also Zaprudering this side of the Power Mac conspiracy is none other than the Naked Mole Rat. Faithful viewer CodeBitch informs us that he's spouting off about new pro hardware in a rare moment of lucidity; the rodent proclaims January 20th to be Apple's target date for the unveiling, with said systems "in the 1.4 GHz range" shipping by February.

Either way, of course, AtAT's dual-800 MHz G4 will soon cease to be the fastest Mac available, so you can expect us to be even more preoccupied and unreachable than usual, as we spend every waking hour recklessly playing 3D games at ridiculous resolutions with all the eye candy turned on in a desperate attempt to squeeze every last bit of high-cycle use out of this thing before it's no longer the big dog of the yard. We don't plan to stop until Apple announces those new Power Macs, or our wrists spontaneously combust-- whichever comes first. (If it's the latter, can we request that Scully does the autopsy?)