Ho hum... Kind of a sleeper of a day in the Mac realm, isn't it? Not much going on. It's one of those days when we develop a newfound appreciation for the hidden depths of drama and strife in something as seemingly humdrum as a Final Cut Pro rebate offer. Yes indeedy, it takes a day like this one to make you recognize the inherent struggle of good versus evil lurking just beneath the benign surface of $300 off Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro when purchased together with any Mac from now until February 28th. Why, when you think about it, the scenario is so action-packed and dripping with crowd-pleasing turmoil, it could have given Kill Bill: Vol. 1 a run for its money at the box office.

Okay, no it couldn't.

So instead, we're reduced once again to scrounging for rumor crumbs at the tables of the usual suspects, and thank heavens that AppleInsider saw fit to post still another report on IBM's ever-increasing "Holy Yikes" quotient as pertains to upcoming PowerPCs. Whether or not you swallow Apple's "fastest, most powerful" hype, even the Wintel world admits that the dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is at least on par with the zippiest hardware the other team's been able to crank out-- and if you ask us, that's just fine. After the Dark Years of Motorolan G4 foot-dragging (heck, sometimes we wondered if those feet were superglued to the linoleum, or indeed if there were even feet to drag in the first place), we're just thrilled to be back in the game.

But if AppleInsider's "new source" is legit, there's a possibility that the Mac's speed advantage will be incontestable as early as ten months from now. Remember when El Stevo announced that the G5 would hit 3 GHz by sometime next summer? Well, apparently that G5 won't even be the same chip as today's G5, in the sense that it'll be a PowerPC 980 derived from the upcoming POWER5 architecture, as opposed to the current 970 which is the mutant little brother of IBM's POWER4 server chip. PowerPC 980s are allegedly going to be sampling in April, with production of 3 GHz chips in volume by "late summer."

"So what," you ask? Well, aside from bringing Macs ever closer to Wintels in terms of clock speed (we know, we know, megahertz doesn't matter-- tell it to the market share numbers), reportedly preliminary testing of early alpha samples of the 980 is revealing "huge performance gains" over existing 970 processors, that's so what. And if today's 970 is already at least competitive with the best the x86 world has to offer (and at best the reason why Intel CEO Craig Barrett has gone back to sleeping fitfully on rubber sheets), then the 980 may well rocket the Mac way out in front of the rest of the pack. Not that Intel, AMD, etc. are standing still, mind you, but it sounds like IBM might be in the zone, development-wise. Stand back and watch the magic, people.