Well, it's official, everybody: the G5 is all just a big hoax. Oh, don't get us wrong-- it exists and everything, and it is indeed one mighty fast chip. But now it turns out that Apple collaborated with IBM for years on the G5's design and sunk untold fortunes into its development just so it can announce four months after the G5 first ships that it's actually switching to Intel processors anyway.

Yup, despite copious amounts of Stevespeak just a couple of months ago about how the G5 is so much better than what Intel is offering today, apparently it's utter trash compared to what Intel will have out in January, because Smart House magazine is reporting that "Apple is set to announce an Intel based PC that will run on an Apple operating system" and that "the first system is expected to shown [sic] at Macworld San Francisco in January 2004." And this is coming to you straight from "an Apple US source" by way of an Australian magazine that focuses primarily on "Home Cinema, Home Theater, Plasma screens, stereo and DVD reviews," so you know it's true. Boy, are you G5 owners going to feel silly come January! (Many thanks to Mac Rumors, incidentally, for unearthing this gem.)

Wait, it gets better: reportedly "software companies like Adobe... have already been briefed on the proposed move," so word of this amazing platform shift has moved beyond the walls of Apple headquarters, and yet instead of hearing this from Adobe employees or any of the myriad sites with internal Apple sources, we're finding out about it from an Aussie home electronics mag. Life sure is funny that way, ain't it?

Meanwhile, guess which Intel chip Apple is allegedly drooling for as it tramples all over the lowly G5 in its mad dash to switch? The Itanium-- the processor that was about five years late and universally panned for its poor performance when running 32-bit code. And oh yeah, it tops out at 800 MHz. (We suppose they might mean the Itanium 2, which goes all the way up to 1.5 GHz, but the supposed "Apple source" is quoted as saying "Itanium chip" twice, so we're guessing that Steve is just going old-school on us all and sticking with the classic Itanium.) So while Apple claims that a dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is competitive with a dual 3 GHz Xeon system, apparently the dirty little secret is that both of 'em get completely annihilated by an 800 MHz Itanium. Who knew?

In the words of the "Apple source," "this initiative is will happen [sic], but when depends on how quickly the software issues are resolved." Gol-ly! While you're chewing on that, make sure you tune in tomorrow-- we've got a lead on a hot new article being prepped for the next issue of the Guatemalan edition of CatFancy about Apple's new Palm OS-based PDA and the company's imminent merger with Disney!