This June, at the World Wide Developer’s Conference, we should get treated to a better view of what has been widely discussed in the rumor web sites, namely the new line of Power Macintosh computers, with the next upgrade to OS X, version 10.3, aka “Panther.”

First, the machines: as Motorola has left Apple without a strong processor for some time now, and in fact is dropping out of the market, IBM picks up the slack with a new chip called the PPC 970. The chip has three major advantages. First, it is a 64-bit CPU, which means that it can double the amount of data handled by the processor. Second, it has a new system bus, which carries the data to and from the processor; until now, Apple’s bus has been notoriously slow, creating a speed bottleneck. The new bus will be much faster than any Wintel chip. And third, unlike the current G3 and G4 chips which have almost maxed out their speeds, the new 970 will start in the 1.4 to 2.0 GHz range, moving up from there. The next generation 980 chip should go up to 2.5 GHz within a year or so.

That may not sound like much, as the Pentium 4 chip is currently pushing over 3 GHz, but there are two factors to be considered in that comparison. First, the Pentium 4 gets a higher hertz rating by compromising actual performance, like a car that revs like crazy but doesn’t go as fast; therefore, a 2.0 GHz 970 chip may well match up to a 3.0 GHz P4. Second, Macs usually come with multiple processors, especially at the high end. So when you look at a dual-2GHz 970 vs. a single-3.2GHz P4, suddenly the Pentium doesn’t look so hot.

Also look for a redesigned case; the new motherboard is said to be longer and thinner than it is now. USB 2 and Firewire 800 will be supported.

Next, we get Panther. The upgrade’s major improvement will be to take full advantage of the PPC 970’s 64-bit architecture, speeding performance considerably. Apple’s iApps will get upgrades across the board; iChat should finally come of age, with full videoconferencing support, iPhoto will get new photo enhancement tools, Quicktime will get another update and Apple’s new web browser, Safari, will end its beta release and come out stronger and more fully-featured. Another project, tentatively dubbed iWorks, may come out. Apple’s Keynote presentation software was seen as a partial answer to Microsoft’s monolithic Office package (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), and Apple may hit them head on with a new word processor called “Document,” and, it is expected, a good spreadsheet program as well. This combined with an upgraded Mail program could offer Mac users a way to ditch Microsoft products altogether on the Mac platform. This could be crucial for Apple, as MS has been rumored to be end-of-lifing it’s Mac version of Office. iWorks would be fully Office-compatible.

Another improvement in Panther would be a new file handling resource called “piles” (I personally think “stacks” would have been a much better name). Piles are supposed to be quasi-folders, a way to organize and group related documents for easy access. Should be interesting to see how they work.

Some believe that 10.3 will be accompanied by 9.3 Classic. If so, 9.3 may only work in Classic mode, and may not be used to boot older computers.

PPC 970 Macs with OS X 10.3 may be released as early as this August.

More as it comes out.