Okay, you can stop worrying now. Well, not generally, of course, because your life is, indeed, one big ol' mess. (Hoooo boy, where did you ever go so wrong?) But at least you can stop fretting about an IBM-Apple rift tearing asunder the two companies' relationship just as Big Blue looks to become Apple's G5-makin' savior. We mentioned last week that things might get a little tense, seeing as how IBM has just partnered up with Threshold Digital Research Labs, a venture aiming to dethrone His Steveness's other company as King of Computer-Generated Movies by becoming, as they put it, the "next-generation Pixar." From what we see and hear, though, Steve doesn't have too much to worry about from Threshold, and he probably knows it.

Granted, there was all that talk about Threshold making breakthroughs in the technical aspects of CG film production, so the company may not be putting its best foot forward, but we're seeing nothing even remotely Pixarian in quality at Threshold's web site. (What, something like this is supposed to trump The Incredibles at the box office?) We've also been informed by those ever-so-reliable "unnamed sources" that Threshold is not exactly following in Pixar's footsteps-- that is, unless Steve's past includes a foray into live online porn (including personally, um, "auditioning" the talent) of which we were previously unaware. Additionally, Threshold's debut feature film, Food Fight, has been described in, shall we say, "less than glowing terms," and sources claim that despite having been in the works for about four centuries and rewritten eleventy-jillion times, it's unlikely to improve at its core. So even if the 6,392-character epic winds up looking fabulous, we're told it's still going to stink up the joint.

Note that we can't tell you if any of this is actually true; we can only tell you that somebody told us that it's true. But if it is, then there are no worries about IBM's partnership with Threshold souring Big Blue's relationship with Apple. For our money, just about the only thing that might put a strain on the Apple-IBM partnership right now would be if, say, Apple were slated to ship its make-or-break Power Mac G5 in the month beginning at the end of this week and IBM hadn't even started making the chips that need to go inside.

On an entirely unrelated note, did you see this InfoWorld article (we came across it via Insanely Great Mac) about IBM's amazing new chip fabrication plant? It, uh, just happens to mention that the plant hasn't even started making the chips that need to go inside.

Yes, apparently a tour guide at the Fishkill fab "confided that the PowerPC 970 (Apple's G5) is not yet in production in Fishkill." Hmmm. Do we sense some kindred spirits over in Fishkill who procrastinate almost as badly as we do? For what it's worth, we doubt it's time to panic just yet, since there are all sorts of possibilities that make this situation far less dire than it might sound. For instance, while the article was published just last Friday, it may well have been written long before-- and the tour obviously took place even before that. The Fishkill guide also insisted that "it takes no time at all to get a new chip into the line," so maybe IBM can spit out all the G5s that Apple needs in about a day and a half. And hey, maybe the first batch of G5s is already done, but it was done at a different plant-- although we consider that a bit unlikely, given how heavily the Fishkill facility is featured in Apple's G5 marketing blitz.

In any case, we sincerely doubt that, after all of its delay-related nightmares with Motorola G4s, Apple would put itself in a position to repeat the same hassles with IBM. Mark our words: one way or another, the Power Mac G5 will ship on time, and in quantity. Of course, if it doesn't, the resulting stock crash will give us enough hair-raising plot material for a solid month, so hey, it's win-win!