So is anybody tallying the official death toll now that Intel's lapped Motorola twice around the racetrack? Because we can only assume that being maxed out at 500 MHz (two processors notwithstanding) while the Pentium 4 is now allegedly shipping in 1.4 and 1.5 GHz flavors has driven at least a few of the long-suffering Mac faithful to untimely ends, either by their own hands or just by the sheer crushing shame of it all. In case you've misplaced your slide rules, right now the fastest Mac processor runs at a measly third of the clock speed of the zippiest x86 chip. Meanwhile, we're wiping a solitary tear from our collective AtAT eye as we gaze up at our Macworld Expo Boston 1996 Power Computing poster, celebrating the 604e's 25-MHz lead over the 200 MHz Pentium Pro with the proud battle cry, "Let's Kick Intel's Ass!" Oh, the exquisite irony...

But don't stick your head in that oven just yet! For one thing, it's electric, you numbskull. For another, according to several reports, Intel's new processor isn't all it's cracked up to be. Faithful viewer Matthew Guerrieri sent along a CNET article about Dell's new Dimension 8100, which just happens to have a 1.5 GHz P4 at its core. Now, presumably we were expected to use this as fodder for yet another "Mike Dell's copying Steve again" plot thread, but in the interest of saving the lives of hundreds of depressed and suicidal Mac users, we're going to skip the stuff about how, with its grey-and-silver, slightly rounded industrial design, the Dimension looks like a Power Mac G4 that spent some time under the Amazing Lame-O-Fying Ray. Likewise, we'll even skip the bit about how Mike Dell is now aping Steve's innovative "Pay To Go Slower" initiative from last year. Aren't we thoughtful? ("Slower?" you ask. Patience, Grasshopper... soon all will be clear.)

See, we're in full-on Sally Struthers mode, here ("Save The Children" Sally Struthers, not "Gun Repair" Sally Struthers), and all we want to do is help our fellow Mac brethren through this difficult time. And so our focus on the Dimension review is this enthralling little tidbit: "The bad: Expensive; slower than a 1-GHz machine running mainstream applications." Read that again, just to make sure you understand it. Yes, the 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 may be a full 500 MHz faster than its 1 GHz Pentium III little brother (and to call a desktop Pentium III a "little" anything is a mighty big stretch), but when it comes to running, say, office-type applications, it's actually slower in real-world performance. A TechWeb article confirms that this isn't just some weird anomaly with the Dell system; it's definitely a chip-level phenomenon.

Okay, sure, the P4 is still a seriously kickin' chip when it comes to multimedia performance (we wonder if Steve will use one for the inevitable Photoshop bake-off when he introduces faster Power Macs?), but the big reason we see this as positive news for the Mac community is this: if the mainstream press reports that a 1.5 GHz P4 is sometimes slower than a 1 GHz PIII, then maybe, just maybe, the average shmoe might start to realize that clock speed is a wildly inaccurate way to judge the actual speed of a processor. That gives the PowerPC (and therefore Apple) a fighting chance when trying to fight the perceived "megahertz gap." Hey, we can dream, can't we? By the way, when last we checked, the Dimension 8100 had 108 user opinions registered in the review, and a full 80% of the reader reviewers gave it a thumbs down. Evidently people aren't thrilled about the "costs more, runs slower" thing. Is this the start of something scary for Intel?

Most people who have watched the iMac slide in the sales ratings over the course of the past year or so attribute its reduced popularity to a number of factors (seemingly low clock speed, no CD-R), but probably none more so than screen size. Simply put, some folks claim that a 15-inch screen just ain't cuttin' it anymore. Since even el cheapo PCs increasingly ship with 17-inch monitors these days (questionable though their quality may be), the fact that the iMac is still shipping with a teeny integrated 15-inch display is a definite black mark in many a shopper's "con" column. That's why there's been a sustained cry for a 17-inch iMac for probably longer than the iMac's been shipping in the first place.

Now, if you've been following this stuff, you know full well that rumors of a 17-inch iMac have been floating around for years. Before each and every Stevenote, the fabled system appears on at least one or two "long shot" new hardware prediction lists, and at a few of those events, its appearance was widely considered to be a dead certainty. But of course, the larger-screen iMac remains a mythical beast, with no hard evidence of its existence in sight. Until now.

First, the good news: the larger-screen iMac does exist, and you will be able to buy it in just over a week. Better still, its integrated display isn't a 17-incher. It's not even a 19-incher. Ready for this? The screen is a thirty-foot display (27.6-foot diagonal viewable image size). The bad news: there's only one of these iMacs currently available for sale, it's only available in Bondi Blue, and it's a two-story-tall inflatable display piece currently up for auction at eBay (thanks to faithful viewer Ben for the heads up). But the screen, people, the screen! Who cares if the thing doesn't actually work? Who cares if the display always says "Hello (Again)"? As long as you can have an iMac screen the size of Montana (if Montana were, say, roughly 375 square feet in size), life is good.

Be warned, though-- this puppy's 300 pounds, so if you bid, be prepared to shell out crazy ducats for shipping charges, unless you live within a four-hour drive of Winston-Salem, NC. At broadcast time, the bidding was up to $330 with over eight days to go, so we expect this thing to cost more than a real iMac when it's finally sold. Then again, with a screen that big, of course it'd cost a few bucks extra. Heck, we're considering bidding on it ourselves, seeing as a giant inflatable iMac would really dress up the back yard of the AtAT compound...

Admit it: you miss the litigational hijinks of that jolly old Imatec ColorSync lawsuit. The thrill of the hunt, the smell of a frivolous lawsuit, a few billion bucks on the line, the constant inane Hanoch Shalit press releases... what's not to love? And then it was all taken away from us last January when a judge pretty much laughed in Imatec's face. Well, fret not, true believers, because it sounds like Apple may be on the receiving end of another patent infringement case any day now. Sure, it won't be quite as goofy, but it does hold some promise to be a rollicking courtroom drama in its own right-- and this time, it's a star-studded extravaganza.

According to Macworld, this time the litigant isn't some two-bit fly-by-night "company" with no products or income. Instead, Apple faces a suit from a "seven-strong industry group" comprising such heavy-hitters as JVC and Matsushita, who allege that the company infringed its patents by shipping Macs with certain DVD-ROM drives installed. See, apparently the DVD-ROM drives in question use patented MPEG compression technologies that were never licensed by the drive manufacturer. "So what?" you ask. "Shouldn't the patent holders sue the drive manufacturer instead of suing Apple?" Well, yeah, that sounds more logical, but considering that Compaq just got sued for the same exact infraction last week, Apple may still face a courtroom showdown.

So far, Apple (as well as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, who are also in the same boat) has only been slapped with a warning letter, not a lawsuit. But seeing as Compaq now faces a $60 million suit for, as The Register reports, "refusing to license" the patented MPEG technologies, if Apple refuses to cough up the dough, we figure it's only a matter of time before the lawyers come a-runnin'. So settle back and reach for the popcorn, because it sounds like Apple's legal team may soon have a defensive challenge to tackle in its inimitable fashion.