Well, all we can say is that it's about freakin' time. First, faithful viewer mrmgraphics reported a truly bizarre sight this morning: a full-blown Power Mac G5 ad on, of all places, CNET's home page. Then Nicolas Grison noticed that the Apple Store was down. And finally, faithful viewer Ian Evans informed us that, yes, Virginia, there are speed-bumped Power Macs. They may not be everything you'd hoped for, but they'll do, Pig; they'll do.

So here's what we've got, ladles and germs: first of all, as several people had predicted, Apple has gone back to an all-dual line-up. The low end moves from a single 1.6 GHz processor to dual 1.8 GHz ones. The new mid-range model boasts twin 2.0 GHz chips like the high-end model used to-- in fact, the only real differences between the two specs-wise are a faster SuperDrive and a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card instead of the RADEON 9600 Pro. And at the top of the heap, there's a new dual 2.5 GHz config. Nothing exactly stunning, especially to people who've been following the rumors since last December, but it's solid as far as interim speed-bumps go.

One slight bummer is that the cost of entry for a current G5 system has just bounced back up to its original $1,999-- the up side, however, is that you get a dual-1.8 GHz model for that price, which cost $2,499 just yesterday. Well, not exactly; according to Apple's press release, the new 1.8 GHz config has half the RAM and hard drive space of yesterday's version, and PCI slots instead of PCI-X, but at least your SuperDrive will be 8x, not 4x. And if you prefer buying your own aftermarket RAM and disks anyway (as many pros probably do) and you don't have a need for high-speed expansion slots, you get to save 500 clams off the previous dual 1.8 GHz model. In any case, it blows the single-processor 1.6 GHz unit out of the water, right? And at least the new mid-range and high-end models cost the same as the old ones.

Meanwhile, the only other big difference in the high-end model is that apparently four discrete thermal zones and nine fans weren't enough to keep those two 2.5 GHz processors from going all Chernobyl; Apple had to add in an honest-to-goshness liquid cooling system as well. So to recap, the difference between $2,999 yesterday and today is that today it gets you an extra 25% clock speed, twice the graphics RAM, twice the SuperDrive speed, and a Mac that sloshes when you shake it. Sounds like a good deal to us.

If you've been holding off replacing your aging desktop system until the Next Big Thing™ this is it. Go buy some. Oh, and we should probably mention that, in classic Apple fashion, the 2.5 GHz config won't ship until next month-- but preorders are what Mac users do best.

Yes, there are finally faster Power Macs; that's the good news. The bad news, of course, is that the G5s inside them top out at 2.5 GHz, which most of us had hoped for three to five months ago, and since the Worldwide Developers Conference and its long-awaited Stevenote are less than three weeks away, the chances of Fearless Leader announcing another Power Mac update at that time are, shall we say, remote. In other words, Steve's "3 GHz within twelve months" promise looks poised to fall over sideways, and the scenario described in the "3 GHz by the end of summer" variant sounds increasingly unlikely as well. Can it really be true? Did Steve lie to us? Or was he even possibly a little bit... wrong?

"Surely not," you reply, and we fully acknowledge that there are ways for Steve to keep his 3 GHz promise without wreaking total havoc on the new Power Mac line-up; we like faithful viewer jkundert's suggestion the best, which is that come WWDC, Steve might take the wraps off the legendary "Xstation." The Xstation, you may or may not be aware, has long been rumored to be an ultra-high-end workstation targeted at ultra-ultra-serious professionals who haven't got two spare nanoseconds to rub together-- but do have deep enough pockets to spend as much cash as possible on the fastest gear on this plane of reality. It wouldn't matter that Apple had just rejiggered the specs and pricing of the Power Mac line three weeks earlier, because the Xstation won't be a Power Mac. And a dual 3.0 GHz Xstation that costs four or five grand would fulfill Steve's 3 GHz pledge while also keeping demand low enough that IBM wouldn't catch fire trying to crank out too many of the top-of-the-line chips. See? Everything would work out just fine.

Unfortunately, it's not going down like that. Because we haven't yet told you the worst news of all: faithful viewer David Poves forwarded us a MacCentral article which includes a whole mess of scary quotes from Tom Boger, Apple's Director of Power Mac Product Marketing. How scary, you ask? Try this little gem on for size: "All in all, no, we are not getting to 3 GHz anytime soon."

Ouch. Like a sledgehammer to the temple, isn't it?

Yup, there it is, blunt as can be and straight from Apple itself-- and thus does the dream die today. Boger explains the situation thusly: "When we made that prediction, we just didn't realize the challenges moving to 90 nanometer would present. It turned out to be a much bigger challenge than anyone expected." Okay, so Apple's eyes were bigger than its stomach. It can happen to anyone. While Boger may be pushing it when he says that Apple's new Power Mac lineup is "something that our customers will be very happy with," he's right (mostly) when he asserts that the new models represent "a very significant upgrade in performance"; after all, a 25% clock speed boost is nothing to boo-hoo about. But man, we are never going to hear the end of this from the Intel crowd. Now all the planets are gonna start cracking wise about our mamas.

Oh, and just in case you haven't had enough dreams crushed by the Bogernator, he also warns us "not to expect a G5 anytime soon in a PowerBook-- certainly not before the end of the year" and says that "it's the same story" with trying to shoehorn a G5 into an iMac; "that would be a heck of a challenge." Quick, somebody shove a sock in this guy's yap before he tells us that Apple will never ship a quad-processor Mac, the Mac Tablet is just a rumor, and there's no Santa Claus!

Enough with the Mac angst: on with the music angst! Now that the downloadable music ecosystem is more varied than ever and bigger players like Napster and Sony Connect are trying to carve out their respective chunks of the market, is the iTunes Music Store still keeping its momentum? Well, there's only one way to find out: time for another iTMS sales check! When last we heard any official numbers from Apple, the iTMS had sold over 70 million songs as of the end of April, but yesterday Reuters reported that the number had climbed to "more than 85 million downloads." So what does that tell us?

Well, lessee here: that breaks down to 15 million songs downloaded in six weeks, or an average of 2.5 million each week. But back in April, Apple had reported that it was selling 2.7 million per week, and just a week after that it sold 3.3 million in a seven-day period-- so given the math of the situation, sales have obviously slowed way down in the past five weeks, to levels well below the April rate. It's even worse if those 15 million downloads include all those free Singles o' the Week that cheapskates like ourselves have been grabbing whether we like the songs or not.

Clearly it's time to panic and run screaming through the streets. Go ahead, we'll wait.

[whistles, cleans fingernails]

All done? Good. Because here's the thing, see: if you really want to wallow in angst, there's a fair chance that things are going to get much worse before long. You know how none of the music services have any Beatles music to speak of? While you can snag a few obscure early tracks like a recording of "My Bonnie" by Tony Sheridan with John, Paul, George, and Pre-Ringo as his backup band, forget about buying a legal download of Revolver or Abbey Road. That's because, for whatever reason, the Fab Four (or their next of kin) have staunchly refused to allow the band's music to be sold in downloadable form. Maybe it's some variation of the old "if someone takes your photograph they've stolen your soul" superstition. No idea.

Well, the good news is that the lack of downloadable Beatles songs may soon change; Reuters reports that "representatives of the Beatles are in discussions with various online music services about licensing their songs for distribution on the Internet." Took 'em long enough. But there's just one little problem: what do you suppose the odds are that the Beatles are going to choose iTunes as a service through which it sells its music in downloadable form? Given that the band is suing Apple over launching the iTMS in the first place, we're thinking it's sort of a long shot. Indeed, while "negotiators for the Beatles have talked with several companies," apparently there's been "a particular emphasis on Microsoft Corp's MSN, which is expected to open an Internet music store late this summer."

Obviously, with $56 billion in cash stacked up in the back room, Microsoft has all the filthy lucre it needs to secure exclusive access to the entire Beatles catalog if it wants to-- and what better way to launch its iTMS clone later this year than by introducing the only service on the 'net with downloadable versions of everything from "Please Please Me" through "Let It Be"? While such a move wouldn't exactly crush Apple's entire music business overnight, if you're the gloomy sort, it would certainly look like the beginning of the end.

We're not saying that's necessarily the way it's going to play out, of course, but if the Beatles really are considering finally allowing the sale of their songs through download services, they wield a very large club in this whole Apple vs. Apple imbroglio. Heck, they could easily license their tunes to everyone but Apple, just to twist the knife. We can't wait to see how this turns out...