Spooooky! A month ago, back when the pundits were kicking around the fact that IBM's new (at the time soon-to-be-) G5-producing East Fishkill plant had already lost $110 million last quarter, we mulled the possibility of a PowerPC curse that brought misfortune and ruin to any company who dared design and produce chips for high-end Macs. After all, Motorola had been shoveled more than its share of woe during the G4 years, what with tens of thousands of layoffs and eight plant closures over the course of about ten minutes. Still, we tentatively categorized IBM's little tenth-of-a-billion-dollar-loss as a mere anomaly, with the caveat that "if we start hearing about copious layoffs... we'll know something supernatural is at work."

So does anyone know if Shout removes stubborn stains from auras as well as clothing? We don't see "Curses" listed on the Stain Solver page, but maybe IBM should give it a whirl.

Okay, it may not exactly qualify as "copious," but as faithful viewer Sam Beard points out, Bloomberg does report that IBM is firing 600 employees from its chipmaking business. There's a world of difference between 600 firings and 48,000 pink slips, granted, but we can't help worrying that this is just the beginning. In addition to the firings (500 of which will take place at IBM's Vermont plant, which, at least, doesn't make G5s), IBM also plans to furlough another 3,000 workers for a week without pay to cut costs still further-- a move that's vaguely reminiscent of that time that Motorola forced all of its employees to use a week of vacation at some point during a specified three-month period, although at least Motofolk got paid for their time off.

About the only thing that gives us hope that these aren't the effects of some curse that'll dog Apple for all eternity is the fact that IBM's chipmaking business has reportedly been struggling a bit for a while, now; apparently it canned 1,500 employees last year and lost over a billion smackers anyway. Considering that IBM and Apple must have been secretly collaborating on the G5 design for a good while, now, that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of some sort of voodoo whammy, but it's the only thing keeping us out of a deep, dark pit of despair. (Well, that and an IBM spokesperson insisting to MacMinute that "PowerPC G5 production will be unaffected" by the firings and furloughs.)

So there isn't a ton of evidence either way on this whole curse scenario, but there's more than there was a month ago, which might make you skittish. Weigh the available facts and make up your own mind-- or reserve judgement until IBM, say, torches the Fishkill plant for the insurance money. By the way, if you do manage to convince yourself that IBM's chipmaking division is losing money all on its own and without a helping hand from the netherworld, you get the coveted Relativistic Optimism award for seeing the bright side of "it's not a curse; the business just sucks!"

And if IBM does indeed wind up laying off a hundred thousand workers, closing half its plants, and seeing its stock price fall through the floor, evidence of a curse against Apple's hired chipmakers will be all but incontrovertible. At that point, we can finally get behind the idea of Apple switching to Intel-- just to watch those insufferable Pentium-pushers subsequently collapse in fiery ruin. See? There's an upside to everything.