This is it, folks: Macworld Expo is only a month away, the pre-show gossip season is officially underway, and we therefore find ourselves clinging to the only known active Stevenote rumor like grim death-- namely, that Power Macs are going to get jiggy with a dose of 90-nanometer Go Juice courtesy of the white coats at Big Blue sometime soon enough to give Steve something neat to point at while he's onstage. Sure, it's no Disney-cobranded Apple tablet running Mac OS X on a Pentium 4, but hey, it keeps the shakes at bay. Mostly.

For what it's worth, AppleInsider has "confirmed" that Apple will indeed start finding 90-nanometer G5 processors (apparently dubbed the "PowerPC 970FX" by IBM) on its loading dock sometime next month, and a revised "Power Mac 8,1" using said chips should become available to drooling Mac fans like yourselves sometime between "late January" and "early March." Consequently, AI's sources still figure there's a "high probability" that Steve will be showing off what 40 fewer nanometers can do when he's strutting his stuff onstage at the Moscone Center in a month.

On a vaguely related note, road warriors may be interested to hear that the 90-nanometer G5 running at its lowest supported clock speed reportedly chews 12 watts; in comparison, the 1 GHz G4 in the slowest current PowerBooks consumes 10. Sounds like a PowerBook G5 may not be so far off after all, especially since the new G5s also support some clever "rapid frequency and power scaling" tricks that the cool kids are calling "PowerTune," which ought to come in handy if Apple ever decides it wants to ship a portable G5 with a battery life longer than seven and a half minutes. Mac OS Rumors says the first round of G5 PowerBooks should touch down in "mid-year" at 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 GHz, but we actually wouldn't be too surprised if they surfaced sooner.

As for those rumors that the new Power Macs might top out at clock speeds as high as 2.6 GHz, though, there's at least one dissenting voice urging a little restraint with the whole expectations-run-amuck thingy: MOSR cites "Apple sources" who insist that most models in the next round of Power Macs will actually still ship with fat ol' 130-nanometer chips. (So much for that New Year's resolution to drop 40 nanometers by Valentine's Day.) The line-up will allegedly go a little something like this: single 2.0 GHz 130-nanometer G5 at the low end, dual 2.2 GHz 130-nanometer G5s in the Peter Brady slot, and dual 2.4 GHz 90-nanometer G5s as the new weapon of choice. MOSR claims we'll have to wait until "mid-year" for 90-nanometer G5s at 2.6 and 2.8 GHz, and September for the PowerPC 980 topping 3.0 GHz.

Whatever happens, though, you can at least be thankful that at least we're not still relying on Motorola for high-end pro desktop chips-- those guys can't even get their cell phones out on time. Remember a couple of months ago, when we reported that Motorola was about to short-ship its customers for camera phones, thus potentially nuking the all-important holiday sales prospects of Verizon, Cingular and AT&T? Well, consider said prospects nuked; faithful viewer Martin forwarded us a CNET article which confirms that many of the promised phones never showed up. Motorola cites "parts shortages." Mm-hmm. Well, we're too giddy with the IBM situation to mention just which "parts" Motorola may actually be missing...