Other than blindingly entertaining boardroom melodrama at Disney, things are surprisingly quiet in Macville right now. Why "surprisingly," you ask? Because Macworld Expo is only a month away, we answer, and frankly, we'd have expected some serious pre-Stevenote speculation to be building nicely by now. (Yes, we're well aware that IDG still hasn't actually listed who's going to do the keynote, but the keynote page refers to "high-powered luminaries that set the pace for the future of the Mac OS platform," so it must be Steve. Or maybe the Noise Boys. Nothing sets the pace for the Mac's future like a Swedish barbershop quartet, baby.)

Oh, sure, there have been little trickles of rumor dribbling around here and there, but MacRumors does its usual excellent job of summarizing pre-Expo speculation, and the bottom line is that it's all still pretty darn thin right now. For example, take the Xserve; "no reports specifically place the Xserve at Macworld SF," but MacRumors had to include it as a Stevenote possibility anyway on the sole basis that "G5 updates are long overdue." New LCD displays are on the list merely due to "unconfirmed hints" from unidentified sources suggesting that the line "should see revisions" in January, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence. And there's a catch-all mention that January will bring the Mac's 20th anniversary, so maybe there's going to be something so insanely great that just seeing it will cause your eyelids to smoke-- although there are no rumors whatsoever predicting anything specific for the occasion. In short, MacRumors pulled together what's out there-- and what's out there is a huge honkin' truckload of not freakin' much.

To put it bluntly, the situation as we see it is pretty dire. By thirty days before a Stevenote we generally expect at least a dozen or so highly-visible and well-formed rumors sprouting up around the 'net predicting specific new products, complete with listed specs and pricing. Granted, we also expect a third of those rumors obviously to be a direct results of the alarming resurgence in LSD use in this country, and the remaining two-thirds to have been blatantly plagiarized from the first handful of acid-trip scribblings, but hey, that's what makes it fun, Skeeter. So what it boils down to is this: you people just aren't making up nearly enough stuff. Shame on you. What, is it the economy? Drugs too expensive these days? We're trying to understand, here.

There's at least one saving grace, though: MacRumors notes "recent rumors" that "suggest that Power Macs will see updates in January, possibly bringing significant speed bumps"-- and then, as faithful viewer Paul Ferro points out, AppleInsider jumps in with the specifics. Reportedly IBM has just "begun the process of fabricating 90-nanometer G5s in volume," with speeds running at 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6 GHz and yields as good as those for the existing 130-nanometer 1.6/1.8/2.0 GHz processors that have populated Apple's Power Macs since summer. Apple is said to be expecting its first shipment of the new chips "sometime in the month of January," opening the door for a product intro at the Stevenote with actual systems shipping in February or March.

The only problem with that rumor is that it's so reasonable it might actually be true. C'mon, folks, get with the program-- we're drowning, here! You know, Cringely had that rumor about Apple tablet devices shipping as early as next month-- maybe you can write and find out what he's smoking...