Hey, it's the weekend, people-- what's with the collective furrowed brow? Don't tell us you're still fretting about that whole Evil Mac Processor Curse thingy; granted, it's a little alarming that whoever signs up to make the chips for Apple's highest-end desktop Macs always seems to start out strong but soon encounters all sorts of inexplicable setbacks, including (but not limited to) extended production delays, abysmally low yields, and being held captive in a cave by Vincent Price after wiping out on surfboards and finding giant spiders crawling on them in their sleep. While the curse has previously wreaked havoc with Apple's quarterly earnings and stock price, right now its primary effect has been to starve Apple of the 90-nanometer G5s it desperately needs to speed-bump its sagging Power Mac line.

But honestly, it's not worth losing sleep over; trust us, we're on it. Our crack team of AtAT cursebreakers has been methodically researching the process of reversing jinxes, hexes, and other whammy-inducing states of bad mojo since March, and despite the fact that said "methodical research" apparently consists of reading all five unAmericanised British-edition Harry Potter novels while wearing white lab coats and scarfing junk food (you gotta love federal research grants-- thanks, Matthew Lesko!), the team claims to have made some real progress. We're assured that the smell wafting up from the tunnels beneath the AtAT compound for the past couple of months is related to some sort of ethereal long-distance aromatherapy, and while we were skeptical at first because it smells exactly the same as the last three times they tried to toast Cheetos over a can of Sterno, it's hard to argue with results.

That's right, we said results. See, the EETimes is reporting that IBM's "struggling Microelectronics Division is reaching a turning point": while the company admits that its processor yields are still "not quite where [they] would like them to be," there's light at the end of the tunnel. In particular, "defect densities have improved quite rapidly," and Big Blue has isolated the "unique interaction with the process and tool" causing the low yields and "lowered the delta in terms of defect rates over the last year." While we have no idea what that actually means from a purely technical standpoint ("fire bad, tree pretty"), the fact that an IBM senior veep summarized by insisting that "yields are rapidly improving, especially in the last couple of months" gives us real hope. Who knew that toasted Cheetos were so effective at battling evil spirits?

So turn that frown upside-down, sunshine, and enjoy the weekend; IBM's going to be positively flooding Apple with G5s in a matter of mere weeks, we just know it. We can hardly wait for WWDC, where Uncle Steve will surely unveil a slew of faster Power Macs and announce availability much sooner than anyone had reasonably anticipated. Yup. No doubt about it.

But, uh, don't hold us to it or anything.