Silverthome... the thing to remember.

This is the favorite time of all things guessing-next-Apple's-product-moves before the annual Macworld scheduled for Jan 14-18, in less than a month from today.

The latest news is that Apple seems to jump in bed even closer with Intel especially on chip architectures centered around Silverthome, a 45 nm low energy micro-processor chip which promises great goodies.

It always starts with the microprocessor. It's size, energy consumption and the size of the motherboard it sits on, together with it's offered functionality are the elements that will define 'what' will dress the internal chips with. 'What' is meant here the type of slick device (a phone, iPod, or slim palmtop full scale computer, in new colors and flavors) that is gonna be built around the mP and its motherboard.

The current Apple rumors cover normal evolution of the iPhone with more disk capacity and 3G functionality for two-way video comms, but also people are talking about slick full scale computers with no hard disks but flash storage, and touch screen capabilities as the iPhone and the Touch iPod.

Are we going to see any of that in the coming MacWorld? I think it's still too early for that, but maybe some clues and glimpses will appear to keep the crowds excited. Whether they'll eventually be there is as sure as the earth is spherical. The timing is only a matter of his Jobness and readiness of his troops. In the meantime, Apple is overtaking Cisco in market cap. A few breaths away from 200 bucks a share.

Read more details about Silverthome here.