You all know the drill by now: Apple innovates, the rest of the industry scoffs, time passes, and the rest of the industry plays follow-the-leader while counting on the public to have forgotten who came up with the innovation in the first place. It's long been true regarding hardware and software development, but this time around, the pattern applies to a slightly different aspect of the business: marketing to correct gross technical misconceptions at the core of how the unwashed masses shop for computers. Yes, folks, soon Apple won't be the only company trying to fight the Megahertz Myth.

As we mentioned yesterday, Intel (the very company whose marketing force has fed the whole "Megahertz = Speed" fallacy for so many years) may soon find itself backpedalling like mad, since its new Itanium processor currently tops out at 800 MHz-- a full gigahertz below its own lesser Pentium 4. And make room on the bandwagon, because here comes rival x86 chipmaker AMD. Once neck-and-neck with Intel in the Great Clock Speed Race, AMD has since slipped solidly into second place; according to a CNET article forwarded to us by faithful viewer Stephanie, the company's new Athlon processor due next month will "only" run at 1.5 GHz, while the Pentium 4 is poised to hit the 2 GHz mark.

So what's AMD to do? After all, it competes far more directly with Intel than Apple does, and since "the vast majority of PC buyers just look at the numbers and go with the bigger one," a 500 MHz deficit is sure to hurt. Well, CNET surmises that in addition to advertising aggressively to help dispel the Megahertz Myth, "AMD could also take a page from Apple Computer." We're not entirely sure what they mean by that, unless they expect the company to borrow Apple's Jon Rubinstein to repeat his seven-minute wild and wacky nonstop thrill-ride of a presentation during the keynote at the next AMDworld Expo. (We bet he doesn't come cheap, either.) In any case, it's clear that AMD is going to have to do something, and soon.

So things may well start to get very interesting over the course of the coming year. If Intel and AMD both unleash their marketing machines to divert emphasis away from clock speed and toward some real measure of, say, actual performance (and the universe doesn't collapse in on itself from the sheer untowardness of it all), Apple stands to reap the benefits without needing to lift a finger. Can you imagine a world in which shoppers choose their computers not by clock speed, but by how quickly said computers can actually perform useful tasks? Neither can we, but at least Apple may soon have some reluctant help in making such a utopia a reality.

Oh, now this sounds like a hoot and a half... Faithful viewer Nina Tovish pointed out an interesting announcement in today's San Jose Mercury News: apparently, SiliconValley.com (the paper's "online partner") is planning to host a little virtual get-together next week-- an "online round table discussion," as they call it. The topic of this little shindig? "The present and future of Apple Computer." Sounds pleasant, right?

But wait just an Apple-bashing minute, here-- check out the roster of participants they've managed to scrape together for the big event: "former Apple Chief Executive Gil Amelio, industry analyst Tim Bajarin, Mercury News reporter Jon Fortt, former Apple product division president Jean-Louis Gassée and former Macintosh product manager Jef Raskin." That doesn't sound like a particularly well-balanced panel to us. If anything, it sounds like the premise for a bad TV sitcom called "Rotten To The Core." "Join us next week for laughs aplenty when Gil pours sugar in the fuel tank of Steve Jobs's jet while Jean-Louis tries to teach Jef how to say 'Mac OS X sucks rocks' in French and hilarity ensues. Don't miss it!"

Yes, we can't wait to hear the new and creative ways in which this panel tears Apple a new orifice. Presumably Gil's going to be rattling off the same old "they'd be doing fine if they'd have stuck to the Master Plan I gave them" routine. Gassée, well, he's not exactly an impartial observer, either; sure, he used to work for Apple, but he left and started up Be, whose operating system Apple almost bought as the basis for what is now known as Mac OS X. Instead, Apple went with Steve's NeXT operating system, and Be is currently floundering badly. We expect thinly-veiled bitterness. Next up: Jon Fortt, who recently wrote an article called "Mac platform good to a point" that basically said Windows XP is going to kick Mac OS X's butt because it's got really great "built-in instant messaging capabilities." Oooooo. And Jef Raskin, widely regarded as the Father of the Macintosh? Well, he went on record last March saying that Mac OS X isn't worth the upgrade, because it's just "another face-lift" with "an awful lot of minuses." We'll see if the imminent 10.1 version has changed his mind at all.

So we've got four panelists with an axe to grind about Apple, or at least about Mac OS X (and this is about the "future of Apple," remember). As for Tim Bajarin, well, we've certainly got nothing against him-- he was the one who recently wrote that once the PC price war is over, the two main contenders left in the consumer market are likely to be Sony and Apple. But when you stick five people in a room and the most Apple-positive one turns out to be the "industry analyst," clearly you're looking at the "online round table discussion" equivalent of a mob hit. If you'd care to tune in for the carnage, reportedly "the discussion will begin Monday at 9 a.m. and end at noon Aug. 16." Whoa, seventy-five consecutive hours of probably Apple-bashing with only a lone industry analyst to defend (maybe) Apple's honor? What could possibly be more entertaining?

We've witnessed some pretty horrible things done to Macs over the years-- the iMac shot up by a pistol-packin' oaf for an Epinions commercial springs immediately to mind-- but even that senseless act of Mac abuse pales in comparison to the latest atrocity to catch our attention. At least an iMac that's been pumped full of lead has been put out of its misery. In contrast, faithful viewer Kurt Gharbi has alerted us to a Power Mac G4 that is suffering a fate far worse than the grave: behold, if your stomach can handle the sight, the G4 PC.

And you thought just running VirtualPC was enough of a degradation for your Mac. Think again. Yes, some poor, misguided soul out there actually ripped the guts out of a Power Mac G4 and replaced them with Intel-type components, including a (shudder) floppy drive. For a while we tried to see the bright side of this terrifying experiment, like perhaps if you have to use a Wintel, at least it this way it can have a little outward style. No go; just seeing those beige panels poking through the Graphite is enough to make any Mac fan cry. Somebody, please make the hurting stop...

It's worth noting that the gentleman who undertook this Frankensteinesque operation did so because he evidently really likes the Power Mac's enclosure, but not the Mac itself; in other words, to him, the Mac's beauty stops at the outer layer of translucent polycarbonate, which is a darn shame. Still, if he already likes the Mac's outsides, maybe someday he'll come to appreciate the insides of the system as well. At that point he'll recognize the error of his ways, give that poor, mutilated Power Mac a decent burial, and buy an unmolested Mac that's beautiful to the core.