Wuh-oh, now Apple's in for it: the consumer watchdog groups are on its case! (Dun-dun-dun-DUNNNNNNN!) Faithful viewer Steve Chambers slid us a CNET article which reports that Apple has been contacted by the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, who advised the company against making "comparative performance claims" in future marketing campaigns. Why? Well, apparently the NAD has taken issue with what it describes as Apple's "broad, unqualified claims" that the Power Mac G5 was "the world's fastest, most powerful personal computer."

If those concerns sound familiar to you, it's probably because you remember every Wintel user on the planet simultaneously going into clinical shock when Apple originally introduced the G5 and the accompanying "world's fastest" claims last summer; their brains simply imploded, and Apple was roundly accused of cheating on its benchmarks, though Apple gave scads of data about its benchmark setup and no one (including Intel) was ever able to prove anything unfair. Nevertheless, that didn't stop a British television commission from banning Apple's G5 commercial from the airwaves because it felt that the "world's fastest" claim was unjustified-- and now it appears that the BBB shares that opinion.

Oh, but that's not all: the NAD also took issue with Apple's claim that the G5 processor was "the world's first 64-bit processor for personal computers," arguing that it "could reasonably be interpreted to apply to workstations," and suggested that Apple change it. So let us get this straight, here: the NAD wants Apple to take its claim that the G5 is-- and we quote-- "the world's first 64-bit processor for personal computers" and modify the claim to-- and we quote again-- "limit it to personal computers."

Is it just us? Are we hallucinating the phrase "for personal computers" in Apple's existing claim, or did someone at the NAD just forget to take his "Duh" pill this morning? Whatever. For its part, Apple notified the NAD that the G5 marketing campaign that's causing so much trouble had "run its course" ages ago, but promised to "be mindful of NAD's views in its future advertising." (Kudos to Apple for taking the high road, because our response would likely have consisted largely of four-letter words that are definitely unfit for broadcast.)

Meanwhile, why did the BBB get involved in the first place, especially this late in the game? Well, believe it or not, it's because Dell went crying to mommy. No, honestly! NAD got into the act because of "a tip from Apple rival Dell," who says it "notified NAD because [it] felt there were some inaccuracies in Apple's advertisement and wanted to act on behalf of consumers in the marketplace who deserve accurate information on which to base their purchase decisions."

Now, regardless of how you feel about the accuracy of Apple's marketing claims (they are marketing claims, after all-- how come no one got on Intel's case when its ads implied that using a Pentium 4 would give you faster downloads?), those Xserve G5s must really have Dell quaking in its boots to make them pull a cheap stunt like calling the BBB. Here's a little taste of what Dell's going through these days: you know all about the astronomical success of Virginia Tech's G5-based cluster, which is the darling of the supercomputing community. In stark contrast, as faithful viewer datafusion points out, the Dell cluster at the University of Buffalo is getting trashed in the press by the school's bioinformatics guy, who says it crashes all the time. Now he's buddying up to IBM, who, of course, made the chips that put Virginia Tech on the supercomputing map.

When faced with that kind of ickiness, no wonder Dell's siccing the BBB on Apple. Next up: having 200 anchovy pizzas delivered to One Infinite Loop in Steve Jobs's name...

Hey, everybody, it's the weekend again-- and rather than sit idly by and watch you people waste your lives vegetating at home, we thought we'd propose a fun little activity that'll get you out of the house and onto the open road. Think of what all that fresh spring air could do for your winter blahs! And if that's not enough to get you to pry your kiesters off the couch, how's this for an incentive: a ten dollar gift certificate for the iTunes Music Store. Ahhhhh, now we're talkin', right? After all, that's the equivalent of ten winning yellow caps in the Pepsi promotion-- better, even, because you can buy a whole album with a ten-buck gift certificate, which, if you purchase wisely, can net you way more than a measly ten free songs.

Anyway, here's how to do it: go test-drive a Scion. Faithful viewer Nathaniel Madura reports having received email from Scion informing him of a promotion whereby simply test-driving the new Scion xA qualifies you for your free gift certificate. (Apparently the tie-in is that the xA comes with "an amazing stock sound system," and "what better to go along with the xA than some iTunes?" Clever.) All you need to do is print out the Complimentary Gift Voucher and have your dealer fill it out at your test drive. Mail in the completed form, wait 6-8 weeks-- the gift certificates are evidently hand-painted by limbless monks who hold single-hair brushes in their teeth-- and voilà: you get your one free album of your choice.

There's a slight catch, of course: Scion is a pretty new sub-brand of Toyota, and while you can't leap out into traffic without getting run over by at least four Toyotas, your odds of being hit by a Scion are pretty slim. The cars are only available in about half the states in the union so far, and what's worse, this iTunes-Scion test-drive promotion is limited to "participating" dealerships in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. If you live in, say, California, the price of a round-trip flight to Alabama may make the prospect of a free $10 gift certificate somewhat less appealing. On the other hand, hey-- ten bucks!

Meanwhile, we couldn't help but notice that the "amazing stock sound system" in the Scion xA maybe isn't quite as well-matched with the iTunes Music Store as it could be. True, it includes a CD player that can play MP3 discs, but iTMS purchases aren't MP3s-- and as far as we can tell, the system lacks a line-in port, so you can't just plug in your iPod and rock out. You can also forget about using a cassette adapter, since "there is no cassette deck included in any Scion audio system. You don't need it, you don't want it, and you shouldn't have to pay for it." That means you'll either have to get an FM adapter for your 'Pod, or burn your free test-drive album to a plain vanilla audio CD to play it in the Scion. Hmmm... do we sense a slight lack of synergy?

We know it's officially Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, but we already did the anti-Redmond thing this week (twice, actually), and we're pretty exhausted what with the crazy hours we've been keeping recently. So is it okay if we keep the obligatory wildly off-topic Microsoft-bashing short and on the mellow side today? Thanks. We knew you'd understand.

This one starts out pretty subtle, kiddies, and yet ultimately winds up being about as subtle as a kick in the teeth: faithful viewer peter sent us a link to, of all things, Bert & Bud's Vintage Coffins. Yes, coffins. Those box-things that dead bodies go in. It seems that Bert and Bud excel in the craft of manufacturing build-to-order caskets for people who live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse, and want a good-looking box to put it in. (If ya gotta go, you may as well go in style; being buried in a slick custom-made coffin is pretty much the only exception to that whole "you can't take it with you" maxim.)

What can this possibly have to do with Microsoft, you ask? Well, scope out Coffin #12, a "White Oak coffin stained a deep walnut color, with cast metal handles and a lift-off lid." Nice. Take a gander at the "tufted" interior upholstery-- pretty swanky, right? And here's the thing: according to Bert and/or Bud, this classy carcass-carton was "built for a Microsoft exec in Bellevue, WA."

So if you're a particularly rabid anti-Microsoft type, we figure that you might be strangely tickled by getting a peek at the receptacle in which at least one Microsoft exec will eventually rot underground. Sure, it's sick-- but hey, so's Windows. And by the way-- sorry, folks; Bill Gates lives in Medina, not Bellevue. But that doesn't mean you can't still fantasize.

But seek professional help afterwards. Sicko.