Okay, we know we've mentioned this before, but it's all starting to come into focus now, so we think it bears a second look. Take a deep breath, concentrate, and try not to go wandering off in boredom when we bring up the sordid issue of... the Megahertz Myth. (Insert jarring and dramatic chord here.) We're sure by now that you're sick to death of people regarding processor clock speed as the ultimate measure of performance, and possibly even sicker of people complaining about people regarding processor clock speed as the ultimate measure of performance. What can we say? Don't blame us-- we didn't make this world; we just live in it.

Actually, if you're looking for someone to blame for this sorry state of affairs, go spit in the coffee over at Intel; those people are the ones who perpetuated the "MHz = Speed" fallacy for all these years by cranking out chips with ever-faster clock speeds at any cost. But as we mentioned before, Chipzilla may well be watching that strategy jump up and bite it in the backside cache. True, the company just shipped a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4, but how exactly is it going to explain to people that its new 64-bit Itanium processor is a zippy little powerhouse-- when it only runs at 800 MHz? After all these years of programming the plebs to think that clock speed is everything, it's deliciously ironic that the company is now forced to try to undo its years upon years of mass brainwashing.

How, you ask? Well, it's starting off slowly, but faithful viewer Victor Agreda, Jr. pointed out an eWEEK article which notes that, despite the fact that the company demoed a P4 running at the ridiculously high frequency of 3.5 GHz, the general manager of the Intel Architecture Group backpedalled by insisting that "computer users will soon care less about processor speed and more about overall performance." (Hmmm, where have we heard that before?) Intel's new focus, apparently, is "moving beyond gigahertz" to pay attention to other suddenly-vitally-important aspects of the computing experience like "reliability, style, ease of use, and power savings." Truly, this guy is a visionary. If only some other company had been working on all those factors for years already, we might have had, say, gorgeous-looking titanium laptops with five-hour batteries and the world's most user-friendly operating system by now. Oh, well.

And what about AMD, who was once neck-and-neck with Intel in the race to break the 1 GHz barrier, but now lags its biggest competitor by some 500 MHz or so? Not long ago, we mentioned that the company would probably have to take a stab at fighting the "Megahertz Myth" itself. Well, as kindly pointed out by faithful viewer The M@d H@tter, AMD is pouting because Intel, it alleges, is "devaluing the meaning of megahertz." According to another eWEEK article, AMD is finally so fed up with the Pentium 4 and its "faster clock speed, slower performance" strategy that it is actually boycotting clock speed altogether. That's right; the company's newest chips won't actually be labeled with a clock speed at all, and in fact, now we're hearing that computer manufacturers using AMD processors will actually be forbidden to market them based on clock speed. Instead, AMD plans to label its chips with a number representing "the number of instructions per clock times the frequency." That oughta play real well in Peoria, right?

So what does all this mean for Apple? Potentially great things. Since Intel got us all into this whole clock speed mess in the first place, its massively effective marketing team may well be able to dig us back out-- particularly if AMD is helping. Imagine if there were some universally acknowledged rating of a computer system's overall performance, and that was the number that got advertised in the Sunday circulars; suddenly Macs wouldn't be "only at 867 MHz" anymore. Okay, so it's not too likely... but we can dream, can't we?

Speaking of Intel, can anyone tell us what specific pod-based alien life form is taking over the minds of that company's higher-ups? We can accept the downplaying of clock speed as a performance indicator in light of the shipping of Intel's new 64-bit "Oops, It Only Runs At 800 MHz" Itanium processor, but the public endorsement of two technologies chosen as standards by Apple has us wondering if the whole company recently packed up and moved to Stepford or something. Clearly this is not normal Intel behavior, and we're just wondering how long we have before the full-scale invasion begins.

Check it out; we were cruising MacMinute for info-bites when we found a link to an ATI press release in which the company announces a new graphics card. No big whoop, right? Except this particular card includes a FireWire port. Still not intrigued? Well, then consider the headline: "ATI and Intel Support IEEE 1394 [that's FireWire to us Mac folks] as Multimedia Connection Standard for PC Products." There's even a quote from an Intel flunky about how great FireWire is: "Intel has long been a proponent of IEEE 1394 as the way to bridge consumer PCs to the emerging class of digital consumer electronics devices." Gee, that's funny, because we could have sworn that Intel originally considered the Apple-invented FireWire architecture to be the work of Satan, and was pushing for the industry to embrace its own USB 2.0 instead.

But that's not all. Remember how Intel was fighting the 802.11 wireless networking standard that Apple popularized via AirPort by supporting alternative wireless architectures like HomeRF and Bluetooth? Well, according to a CNET article, Intel has pretty much abandoned HomeRF, since the company just announced new consumer-grade wireless networking products that are 802.11 all the way. And as for Bluetooth, well, another CNET story notes that an Intel executive has gone on the record as stating that "802.11 has won" and that "Bluetooth is in full retreat from Moscow at the moment." Clunky historical reference aside (and the fact that we've always assumed that Bluetooth was intended for short-range, focused wireless connections for stuff like cell phones and PDAs, not as an 802.11 competitor), to see Intel publicly admitting defeat and throwing its support behind technologies it once opposed is disconcerting, to say the least.

So kudos to Steve Jobs; we're not sure whether his plan involved the aforementioned alien pods or if he is just soaking Intel's headquarters with near-lethal doses of satellite-boosted Reality Distortion Field energy, but whatever he's doing, it appears to be working. Now we're just waiting for Intel's CEO to come out and say, "Man, we really should have bagged this whole x86 thing years ago. You know what's a totally good chip architecture? PowerPC. Now that's a processor you can really sink your teeth into."

Okay, when Amazon announced it was now selling personal computers online, we accepted the news with a casual yawn and an utter lack of interest and surprise. After all, Amazon's been adding so many new categories to its online store over the years, you really have to be a wide-eyed simp to oooooh and aaahhh over every little addition. Originally it was books. Then there were videos and CDs, which seemed like a natural extension. At some point they added software, consumer electronics, cameras, mobile phones-- all still sort of bookstore-type stuff, we suppose. Then we noticed categories showing up like "Kitchen & Housewares," "Outdoor Living," "Health & Beauty," and "Tools & Hardware," and we started to get jaded. Once "Cars" got added, Amazon could have announced it would soon be selling military-grade weapons and crack cocaine and we wouldn't have batted an eye.

Indeed, even the news that Amazon's new computer section would be selling Macs didn't particularly pique our interest. Sure, we were glad to hear that Apple was gaining another sales partner (and a nice high-visibility one at that), but again, we had a serious case of Amazon Jadedness and figured it was no big whoop. But then faithful viewer pbrice wrote in to tell us something that did make us sit up and take notice: Macs were appearing on Amazon's "Top Sellers" list. When one of the biggest names in online shopping reports that Macs are making up a reasonably mammoth chunk of their computer system sales, that's when we start to pay attention.

Apparently when pbrice wrote in, the basic Indigo iMac had been in the number one slot. When we last checked it had fallen into second place behind some Toshiba laptop, but still, second place is nothing to spit at. And as it turns out, the Snow 500 MHz iMac is lodged squarely in the fifth place slot, following a pair of Compaq desktops in third and fourth. So, at least when last we checked, Apple commanded two of Amazon's top five. Not bad, huh?

So we're starting to get excited about this Amazon-Apple deal after all. Not only is it terrific exposure for the Mac platform (heck, there was a picture of a PowerBook G4 right on Amazon's home page), but it also appears that Amazon might really be able to move some merchandise. Who knows? Maybe the next time we preorder a copy of The Princess Bride on DVD, we'll be tempted to toss a Quicksilver Power Mac G4 in the cart-- you know, just to consolidate items and save on shipping. Why, we'd be fools not to!