Okay, the buzz on the PowerPC 970 is starting to heat up something fierce. It's already pretty much a given that Apple plans on at least demonstrating the new chip's capabilities at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference, but the big question is whether or not Steve will drop jaws from Tallahassee to Timbuktu by announcing that real, honest-to-goodness 970-based Power Macs will be "available immediately." As far as we know, all the official poop on the 970 indicates that it shouldn't show up in shipping systems for several more months yet, but hey, wasn't that the story with the G4 in the summer of '99, when Steve yoinked 'em out of his sleeve anyway? So, you know, anything's possible.

The only problem with infinite possibilities is that they tend to make every little unsubstantiated bit of dirt that wafts through the ether at least mildly believable, and that can be hazardous to one's well-cultivated sense of cautious skepticism. For example, faithful viewer Chuck tipped us off to a note over at MacRumors, which in turn refers to yet another rumor at MacBidouille-- whose name is French for "Lots More Rumors About The PowerPC 970 Then All Those Non-French Sites Put Together." (It's a very efficient language.) As far as we can make out from the translation, MacBidouille claims that the first 970-based Macs are done. As in, done done. As in, "off the production lines, into the boxes, stacked on pallets" done. Reportedly said pallets are wrapped in "opaque and sealed film" and bear labels that read "tamper-proof seal, confidential property inside, prosecution may result if opened by unauthorized personnel." The alleged "Do Not Open Until" date? June 23rd-- the first day of WWDC.

Now, granted, the folks at MacBidouille have the grace to admit that this rumor is "without tangible proof," but in their own estimation "it has very good chances to be true." Personally, we don't see any particular reason to form a strong opinion one way or the other, but we will say this: if 970-based Power Macs are indeed sitting on a pallet in a warehouse somewhere, we find it hard to believe that at least a couple haven't walked off already, tamper-proof film be damned. Given that Mac professionals have been stuck with Motorola's glacial rate of G4 improvement for almost four years now, we can pretty much guarantee that there are at least a few impatient Mac users out there who are rabid enough for an upgrade to locate those pallets, make their way past Steve's elite squadron of heavily-armed Secret-Keepers™ (perhaps losing a limb or two in the process), tear through those tamper-proof labels with broken teeth, and drag the gear off clutched in charred and bloody stumps.

Seriously, if those systems really are done, making the Mac pros wait another three and a half more weeks to get their hands on them just seems cruel. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not true...