Sick of wondering just when the heck new PowerBooks are going to show up? Of course you are-- so is everybody else on the planet with a pulse. Don't worry, we're not even bringing it up. At least, no more so than to say we're not bringing it up. And, um, also to tell you that we only brought it up to say we're not bringing it up. The way people have been harping on the issue, you'd think Apple didn't make anything except PowerBooks, when, as everyone knows, they also make a killer slab of fruit leather. Oh, and lots of other computer-type thingies. So instead of waiting for pro portables that probably won't show up until President Kutcher throws out the first pitch of the Hover Baseball season, let's talk about the other products in the on-deck circle at One Infinite Loop and when we might finally see that stuff.

First up: Mac OS X 10.3, known in more dramatic circles as "Panther." This has been an issue for a while, as you well know; news reports prior to the operating system's official introduction pegged the product for a mid-September release, but in June His Steveness stated only that it'd be available before the end of the year. After that, though, rumors swirled that Panther was indeed destined for a mid-September launch after all, specifically at Apple Expo in Paris on the 16th; for a while it really looked possible, given how quickly development had been progressing, but now with less than two weeks until the Paris gig and Panther still in beta, mid-October is looking more and more likely.

Or is that early October? Now AppleInsider is claiming that Apple's official target date for Panther's unleashing is October 3rd. Get it? 10/3? 10.3? Ooooh, it's all clever and stuff! Apparently we're supposed to expect all sorts of cute in-store celebratory tie-ins come the Big Day, so mark your calendars now just in case. Dare we suggest live panthers in every store, ready to pounce on and maul anybody who says that Exposé "isn't actually all that great"?

Meanwhile, what about that wireless mouse 'n' keyboard set whose existence has been confirmed in so many different ways that Paul Simon's about to record a song called "Fifty Ways To Leak Your Input Devices"? Well, despite earlier reports that Apple had hoped to intro them alongside the G5 back in June, Mac OS Rumors now reports that the company will be sitting on them until January-- but hey, at least they'll be all warm and toasty when we finally get them in the dead of winter, right? (Then again, a January unveiling certainly means Macworld Expo, and the dead of winter in San Francisco isn't all that dead after all.)

Lastly, on the "recklessly unconfirmed" front, some guy wearing a powder-blue tux and carrying a pineapple ran past us at the bus station while muttering something about storage bumps to the current iPod line (with the top-of-the-line model hitting the Big 4-0) coming as early as Monday, but as everyone knows, you just can't trust a man with a pineapple. Or can you? Well, no. You can't. Forget we said anything.