First off, don't ask. Seriously, just trust us on this one; the explanation behind our most recent two weeks AWOL is a tale far too convoluted to cram into our meager time slot, and would still be too long to relate even if the network were to grant us rollover minutes for unused airtime. The super-short version is that we're so overcommitted right now that, in the next edition of Webster's, next to the entry for "overextended" will be a picture of the AtAT staff playing dodgeball while juggling an assortment of cordless power tools and an asthmatic goat. Suffice it to say that the past fortnight has been a long, strange trip (or, relativistically from our perspective, a short strange one), and always remember: if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, under no circumstances should you attempt to elect a new Pope while simultaneously running the Boston Marathon. Bad Things™ will (and did) ensue. Don't try this at home, kids.

As it turns out, though, fortune must be smiling upon us, because we're out of the Burn Ward just in time to spout our patented inconsequential drivel about the new Power Macs that Apple just horked up. Not that there's much to say, mind you, since, as Think Secret had previously reported, the new models aren't exactly going to be sending many Mac fans scrambling for their heart pills. AppleInsider concurs: single core processors, no PCI-X 2.0 or PCI Express expansion slots, no Blu-Ray DVD support, no built-in Slurpee machine... just a modest across-the-board clock bump that'll bring the high end to 2.7 GHz. Which is particularly galling when you realize that WWDC is just around the corner, meaning that a full year after the deadline by which Steve said we'd all be tooling along at 3.0 GHz, we'll still be 10 percent short of that goal.

No, the specs of the new Power Macs aren't exactly dripping with drama, but the way in which they were made public sort of is. See, by now you may well have zipped off to Apple's Power Mac page to scope out all the details, only to find the same ol' same ol' topping out at dual 2.5 GHz, at which point you simply assumed that we're still tripping on the morphine. And well we may be, because everything we see is furry and we keep hearing Tom Waits singing the Partridge Family's greatest hits, but regardless, faithful viewer yoshiki_of_x tipped us off to the fact that Amazon.com just added a page for the dual 2.7 GHz model, complete with 512 MB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, a 16x dual-layer SuperDrive, and Tiger preloaded; for a while Amazon was even taking preorders for it, but now the page simply states that "this item is currently not available." (Digging around a bit uncovered listings for the dual 2.0 GHz and dual 2.3 GHz models, too.) Meanwhile, AppleInsider claims that as of Monday the new Power Macs were definitely en route to Apple's retail stores for availability this Wednesday, and now has photos to prove it (if a photo of something blocky on a pallet wrapped in opaque plastic so as to obscure any hint of what might be inside meets your personal definition of "proof").

So there's no official word from Apple as of yet, but AI expects an announcement by tomorrow. We figure it'll be suitably low-key when it comes-- a press release at most, since there's nothing particularly ground-breaking about the new Power Macs to make the world gasp in awestruck reverie. And hopefully we'll actually be here to say something when the announcement comes, but we should warn you that two or three episodes a week in between the occasional total vanishing-off-the-face-of-the-planet hiatus will probably continue to be the norm for a while until our lives regain some semblance of sanity (or someone figures out how to cram an extra eight or ten hours into each of our days). But hey, it sure beats that time we slipped into an alternative dimension for eleven weeks straight, right?