It's official, people: predictions of when new Mac hardware will arrive are now all over the freakin' map. On the Power Mac front, right now the consensus in the rumor mill appears to be abandoning the March 26th-ish theory in favor of Mac OS Rumors's long-posited prediction that an unveiling at or just prior to NAB is far more likely. AppleInsider, at least, has more or less climbed on board with that scenario, reporting that "Power Mac G5 revisions may not ship until much later in April" and its sources "doubt that Apple would introduce any new products prior to the close of the fiscal quarter," which ends on March 31st. Bolstering that theory is the report that Apple has allegedly warned dealers that all Mac inventory "is expected to be 'sold-out' by March 27th"-- except for Power Macs. And if Power Macs are the one system Apple does have in stock at the end of the month, it hardly seems likely that Apple would ship new ones at that time, unless maybe it's for some sort of performance art thingy.

Oh, but wait-- it gets worse. Now Mac OS Rumors says that "a great many sources in retail are saying they've been told to expect no major Power Mac updates until as far off as June or even July." MOSR isn't putting a whole lot of faith in those reports just yet, but if they're true, then Apple may have decided to bag on the whole 2.5 GHz speed-bump altogether, opting to jump right to the 3.0 GHz that Steve promised us last summer. Maybe Apple knows something about IBM's 3.0 GHz timetable that the rest of us don't; if it's going to ship in volume in July (remember, Steve said "summer"), it hardly seems worth the effort to ship an interim 2.5 GHz model just to replace it three months down the line. Seems to us the energy would be far better spent finally getting that orbiting death ray up and running.

Meanwhile, Power Macs are just the tip of the rumorological iceberg. What about all those other Macs that'll be sold out at the end of the month? Apple has reportedly told its resellers to expect a three-week "product dry spell," theoretically because all the gear will be diverted to school districts to fill orders coming in at the start of the educational buying season. And okay, that makes sense, but between this new "dry spell" report, recent claims that certain eMac and iMac models have been designated "End of Life," and previous rumors of "something huge" coming in April, the odds of at least some revised consumer desktop models (iMac G5?) showing up within the next month or so seem pretty decent right now. (Of course, we thought that the odds of speed-bumped Power Macs arriving last January seemed pretty decent, too, so you might want to keep that fact firmly in mind before you go calling your bookie.)

That takes care of desktops-- how about notebooks? Well, AppleInsider still maintains that new PowerBooks won't surface before the "final week of April," and doesn't specify whether they'll be yet another G4 incarnation or the first PowerBook G5s to grace the planet with their presence. But faithful viewer Armin notes that MacTechNews is placing its bets on a PowerBook G5-- albeit one that won't arrive until WWDC in June. It's in German, so you know it's true. You can scope out Babelfish's automatic English translation, if necessary, but be warned: the rumor loses a lot of its inherent authority without the German, and you may find yourself wondering just who those guys are in the first place-- and that's a guaranteed buzzkill when you're trying to get swept up in the rumoric drama of it all.

At the end of the day, of course, the only thing that everyone seems to be able to agree on is that new Macs are coming at some point before the sun burns out, and we're guessing that you already knew that. The good news, though, is that the rumors cover pretty much every Mac in Apple's line-up-- well, except the iBook. So, uh, would anybody mind sending us an unconfirmed iBook rumor? Seriously, make one up if you have to. We're just feeling weirdly unsettled without one.