Ahhhh, there's nothing like starting off the week so late your brain thinks it's August already. Pardon our even-worse-than-usual tardiness with this episode, kiddies, but we got socked with a double-whammy of the standard last-minute tax-time documentation nightmare (we're off to see Tax Guy Bob in about four hours) and-- horror of horrors-- a broken Treo. But we've pulled together the paper trail of our slow-motion financial ruin, our replacement phone is configured with the requisite "Come On Eileen" ringtone, and we're finally ready to tackle the day's Apple-flavored drama-- twenty-fourish hours late, sure, but moving fast.

On the plus side (and there's always a plus side), we're not sure just how fast we need to be moving, since apparently not a whole lot happened Monday. For instance, it's not like Apple finally shipped those freakin' speed-bumped G5s, right? Right. So all we've got on that front is the latest crop of rumors seeking to explain why they still aren't here. AppleInsider, who at one point had blamed a lack of graphics cards for the delay, now figures that Apple is knee-deep in ATI-y goodness and the Power Macs are more likely held up due to "unknown internal issues"-- and we all know how painful that can be. Specifically, AI cites possible "supply or cooling issues" nuking Apple's move to the new 90-nanometer chips.

Cooling? Sheesh, just slap a bag of ice in each Power Mac, lower the warranty to the amount of time it takes five pounds of ice to melt when nestled up snugly against a toasty G5 processor or two, and be done with it. If the problem is supply, on the other hand, well, then it's largely out of Apple's control-- especially if the government's involved. How's this for a healthy dose of intrigue to start the week? Faithful viewer Mike Scherer tipped us off to the fact that Mac OS Rumors's explanation for the G5's continuing no-show status is that Apple has been inundated with "massive purchases of... dual-processor Xserve G5s [and] preorders of faster 970FX-based Power Macs"-- purchases by the good ol' U.S. government.

That's right, folks; according to MOSR's sources, the reason you're still watching the paint peel instead of getting your 2.5ish GHz mojo workin' is because a D.C.-area law enforcement agency ("possibly the FBI"), "some arm of the Department of Defense," and an "emerging government agency (possibly Homeland Security)" are all pestering Apple for scads of 90-nanometer G5 fun, allegedly to build some attack-resistant clusters and a supercomputer or two. Remember that the Xserves now use the same chips as the expected speed-bumped Power Macs, so a big hush-hush order for a slew of those (on top of the 1,100 already slated for Virginia Tech) might well cause a chip supply problem delaying a product announcement. Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them? Oh, right... given the "law enforcement agency" rumor, they're probably ordering some hush-hush G5s for themselves.

Reportedly "Apple has been asked to keep the purchases off the normal books," presumably so that terrorists won't realize that the government has a secret weapon: a DHS that's packin' Mighty Power Macs o' Justice, boy howdy. So whaddaya think-- is truth stranger than fiction? Or at least as strange as fiction? Because faithful viewer John Jira alerted us to a TidBITS April Fool's joke from last week, which claimed that Homeland Security was switching completely to Macs for security reasons. It's either a remarkable coincidence, or TidBITS's Adam Engst has already been spirited off to a safehouse for "aggressive debriefing." You just gotta love these covert government plot twists...

"Hey, AtAT," some of you have asked, "how come you never gave eternal punching bag Rob Enderle what-for over his comments last week about the Xbox 2?" Well, truth be told, folks, it's getting a little... well, boring, we suppose. After all, how many times can someone point at a man slapping raw meat against his head and say, "hey, look, that silly man is slapping meat against his head"? Eventually we just get tired of stating the obvious. That said, clearly some sort of take on the latest Enderlism is called for, because it's been a week and the guy still hasn't recanted-- so here's how we're spinning the situation: could he actually be right for once? Could this finally turn out to be Rob Enderle's moment in the sun? (Everybody loves a comeback story, right?)

So here's the backdrop: faithful viewer Rob Menke was first to point out that ol' Analyst Robbo spent his airtime at TechNewsWorld last week explaining that everyone else on the planet is wrong, and that Microsoft's Xbox 2 will not ship with some form of PowerPC-derived custom chip, but rather with something evolved from an x86-based AMD processor. And, of course, he felt compelled to put forth this rather unorthodox theory in a manner belittling Mac fans: "This is only a guess, but with what we know about the new converged platform, I can at least confirm that rumors of Microsoft moving to a G5 chip were just wishful thinking by a few Apple loyalists. The chip will be built by IBM, which also builds for VIA and AMD. My best guess, given the timing of the product and the new PlayStation 3, is that it will be based on the AMD 64-bit core that IBM helped develop."

Ooooookay, then. We'll just let that whole "Apple loyalists" comment slide for a second and point out that, while it's nice that Rob admits that he "confirms" his facts with "just a guess" (people pay him for this! Honestly!), that leaked IBM memo from a few months back clearly stated that Big Blue had been tapped not just to build the Xbox 2 processor, but rather "to design, develop and make the processor for the next generation of Microsoft's Xbox game system." Somehow we find it doubtful that IBM would be trumpeting its Xbox win if it were going to crank out an x86 instead of a processor based on its own Power architecture. And there's also that little matter of Microsoft's current Xbox 2 Software Development Kit reportedly consisting of custom software preinstalled on a dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5. Surely if the Xbox 2 were going to be AMD-based, Microsoft would be shipping AMDs to the developers, no?

Okay, granted, neither of those reports originated from what you might consider big-name, unimpeachable news sources. But if those aren't enough to make you wonder what kind of gooey substance clings to the inner walls of Rob Enderle's cranium, consider this nifty interview by CBS MarketWatch, as pointed out by faithful viewer Jimmy. Jeff Benck, vice president of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, dishes the skinny: "I don't know if you've seen it, maybe you haven't based on your comment, but we're getting Power everywhere. We basically have the trifecta of game devices, with recent wins at not only Game Cube and Xbox, but also moving into next-generation game systems all the way up to the Power architecture going into our high-end pSeries and iSeries platforms."

There's a little interpretive wiggle room on that quote, but to us it sure sounds like an IBM veep flat-out stating that the Xbox 2 will be Power-based. Granted, the date on that interview is the day after Enderle made his AMD prediction, but even now he's apparently sticking to his guns; faithful viewer Andrew Woods actually wrote to him and pointed out the whole G5-as-SDK thing, and Enderle wrote back with this: "Actually I meet with the Xbox 2 team on a quarterly basis, sorry I didn't mention that. I also meet with the embedded systems group... neither is even thinking of a non-x86 platform product for embedded XP or embedded Longhorn... Microsoft did deny the G5 stuff, I did ask."

That's right, folks-- Rob claims that he's getting his "Xbox 2 is x86" info straight from the higher-ups at Microsoft themselves. He even insists that Microsoft has denied the G5-as-SDK stories, and while the guy is wrong a lot, we never really figured him for a liar. So, like we said: is this going to be the time that Enderle finally breaks his streak and winds up being correct? It may be a good long while before specs of the Xbox 2 go public, but we're already on the edges of our seats with suspense. It's all about rooting for the underdog. Go, lil' fella, go!

It's pretty off-topic, sure, but seeing as we're broadcasting this episode so late, we really can't let it go without at least a brief mention of Sunday's big news. And really, why not? What else are we going to mine for drama right now, the latest security updates? The upcoming Apple retail store in Kansas City? Puh-leaze. (Not that we have anything against Kansas City, of course. Some of our best friends are Kansas Citian. Kansas Citese. Whatever.)

So, yeah, we're going to take a little time out for a verbal happy dance over Big Bad Bill's drop from the top spot in the World Rankings of Filthy Lucre. Faithful viewer Jeff was the first of many, many people who gleefully informed us that, as Reuters reports, apparently Bill Gates is no longer the richest guy on the planet. The last time we remember that happening was almost three years ago, when Mr. Wal-Mart snuck into the lead about a year after Gates's wealth duked it out with Larry Ellison's for a few months. There's nothing more satisfying than watching two insanely rich individuals jockeying for the official title of "More Money Than God."

Well, this time Bill was reportedly unseated by-- ready for this?-- Ingvar Kamprad, the guy who founded IKEA and the only person we've ever heard of whose name is an anagram of "Radar Vamp King." (That's so cool. Leave it to the Swedians. Swedese. Whatever.) The report cites "next week's edition of the Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer"-- those wacky Veckans and their affarers!-- which reports that the 77-year-old Radar Vamp King has about 400 billion Krona sitting in the bank. At the time of the report, that came out to roughly $53 billion in U.S. greenbacks; right now it's more like $52 billion.

The last time Forbes updated its list of the filthy rich, Gates was estimated to be worth $47 billion, although given how fast this stuff changes due to stock market fluctuations and exchange rates and whatnot (Radar Vamp King lost a billion bucks in the past two days, fer cryin' out loud), maybe he's still in the lead. But just because we feel like smiling, we're sticking with the Forbes numbers. All hail Ingvar, who, in purely financial terms, could now buy both Gates and Steve Jobs, and still have enough change left over for a mid-size chain of affordable family restaurants.

So if your knowledge of Sweden was limited entirely to their wondrous way with meatballs and the krünk-vs.-pöpli debate, now you have another fun fact to file away in that grey matter of yours: it's the country that produced a man with a freakin' cool name who overtook Bill Gates in the Crazy Piles o' Cash department by selling a whole lotta build-it-yourself furniture-- without running afoul of antitrust laws, we might add. Now that takes some skill. Hear that, Bill? Care to try it again-- the hard way? No, we didn't think so.