Sigh, we hate it when the rest of the industry can't stay in character. Look, people, we're the soap opera, right? So when an allegedly technically astute German computer magazine starts publicly lambasting Apple for calling the Power Mac G4 a "supercomputer" because its testing using the industry standard SPEC benchmarks reveals that, for floating point operations, a 1 GHz G4 processor is a total dog on quaaludes compared to even a relatively ancient 1 GHz Pentium III, our role is to bask in the drama, wring our hands, and milk it for all it's worth and then some. Meanwhile, it's up to the "real" technical press to notice and report that said German magazine's methodology had more holes in it than a colander made out of Swiss cheese. In this manner, you, the viewer, would get both an entertaining dose of hysterical melodrama and a serious technical grounding that would let you enjoy our hysterics while realizing you'd have no reason to run screaming into traffic. See? It's all about demarcation.

Unfortunately, as faithful viewer Timothy Ritchey pointed out, it looks like everyone else out there forgot their lines. Even The Register, normally way better about this sort of thing, surprised us by running a headline of "Benchmarks demolish Apple speed boasts"-- sheesh. So now, much as we hate to do it, we're forced to backtrack and mention a couple of obvious reasons why c't's benchmarking results aren't really a reason to start drafting a suicide note.

First and foremost, c't itself admitted that the G4 should have mopped the floor with "the x86 FPU with its antiquated stack structure and eight registers only"-- so why, when the G4 was shown to be half as fast as the Pentium III, did the magazine just say "gee, we guess the G4's no supercomputer" and then saunter away, hands in pockets, whistling a jolly tune? Doesn't anyone think it's strange that they failed to mention that the SPEC2000 test, as compiled, utterly ignores the G4's Velocity Engine registers, which are what gives that chip its supercomputer-class, greater-than-gigaflop floating point performance? What c't did is tantamount to forcing you to write with your toes and then telling you that your handwriting sucks.

What's more, while the industry just loves SPEC benchmarks, faithful viewer Mark Davis reminds us that they've always been biased towards Intel processors, in part because the SPEC code just floods the chip with a constant stream of perfect instructions and let it work at peak efficiency, which is nothing like how real software is processed. As you may recall from Jon Rubinstein's "Megahertz Myth" spiel, Intel's recent chips take a speed hit from the recurring need to clear and refill those extra-long pipelines due to incorrect predictive branching-- it's that whole "pipeline tax" thing. With the SPEC test, there are no data dependency bubbles, and therefore no pipeline tax, so Intel's chips perform better than they would in actual battle conditions.

Apple itself obliquely refers to this problem on its G4 page: "Another aspect of speculative operation worth noting is that it is possible to create (for testing purposes) a contrived set of instructions that can make the processor guess correctly much more often than it would under real-world conditions. Thus a 'benchmark' with no relation to actual performance can be crafted to cleverly avoid the bubble problem and thus indicate unrealistically high performance." No one's mentioned by name, but all signs point to SPEC-- which was never meant to test real-world performance.

Good enough, people? So don't panic, and just remember that it's totally ludicrous to think that a 1 GHz G4 would perform only half as well as a 1 GHz Pentium III at real-world tasks. Chip-level benchmarks like SPEC mean nothing when it comes to getting your work done; for cryin' out Pete's sake, c't even disabled one of the G4 processors in that dual rig for the sake of measuring the performance of a single chip, but you're not going to turn one off to run Photoshop, right? Right. Now, back to the drama; we just hope that the other sites can remember their roles next time, because we're supposed to be rattling on about black turtlenecks and Reality Distortion Fields, consarn it, not analyzing benchmark data. Seriously, if we ever have to say "incorrect predictive branching" in an episode again, we're gonna have to bust some heads.

Boy howdy, the menu just keeps on getting bigger! If you thought all you could get via Apple's online WebObjects-based purchasing system was Macs, think again; since it first started logging hits over four years ago, Apple has gradually mixed in a hearty selection of zesty software and lip-smackin' accessories to satisfy all but the biggest appetites. Now, when you order up a piping-hot made-to-order Power Mac (hold the SuperDrive), it's easy to round out your meal with a digital camera, a FireWire camcorder, a stack of software, and a color printer on the side. Yes, the Apple Store: it's not just for breakfast anymore. Keep that Pepto handy.

Still, until now the menu has been pretty solidly Mac-specific cuisine, and for obvious reasons. But the latest addition to the Apple Store's bill of fare has something of a more... continental flavor to it. Faithful viewer Tyson Evans points out that customers can now add a selection of DVD movies to their Apple Store orders, thus marking what appears to be Apple's tentative first step into the wild and woolly world of not-necessarily-Mac-related general merchandise. A quick scan of today's specials indicates that Apple Store patrons can now wolf down DVD copies of Bridget Jones's Diary, Ghost World, Moulin Rouge, Memento, Planet of the Apes (the remake), and-- for all of you who thought Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo-- Pearl Harbor. What, no Pixar selections?

We know, we know-- Apple is categorizing these movies as "software" and they're intended as digital content for use on DVD-enabled Macs, so it's not like the company is planning on becoming the next Amazon any time soon. Still, the fact of the matter is that these flicks aren't Mac software; they can be watched just as easily on a regular consumer DVD player. So how long will it be before Apple starts offering a few dozen music CDs on the premise that customers can rip them into iTunes and transfer them to their iPods? As we all know, from there it's a slippery slope down into the world of selling baby strollers and George Foreman Grills.

However, we'll jump off that bridge when Apple sets fire to it. In the meantime, the next time you're loading up on gear at the Apple Store, consider adding a movie or two to the mix. Surprisingly enough, the prices aren't half bad; compared to ordering up the same dishes at Amazon, Apple's movies are, at most, only 71 cents more expensive. And get this-- when last we checked, Moulin Rouge was actually four cents cheaper from Apple than from Amazon. Why, with the four cents you'd save, you could almost buy an after-dinner mint. Very refreshing.

So we're hearing mostly good things about this past weekend's grand opening of the Apple retail store at The Streets At Southpoint in Durham, North Carolina, which is music to our ears. We were worried that after 27 stores and a three-month break, Mac fans might not be so juiced as to line up early just to get into Yet Another Retail Store; after all, they all pretty much look the same, you know. And even though the Southpoint location is the first in that geographical area, there's been so much exposure of the store's immutable interior that we were a little concerned that even the most fanatical Mac users might be too jaded to give up a Saturday morning snooze-in just to hang at the mall.

Happily, our fears proved unfounded; faithful viewer Phil pointed out an article in The Herald-Sun which quotes the Apple store's assistant manager as saying, "We had people waiting outside at 6 AM in the rain." Granted, that's not the "two freaks who drove 1300 miles in a flaming Yugo to get in line three weeks in advance" sort of story we were accustomed to hearing last year, but hey, given the circumstances, we consider waiting for four hours in the rain to be a pretty hardcore move. All told, "about 200 people were waiting in line" when the store opened its doors. To those 200 people: we salute you. You are a credit to your mania.

For what it's worth, the early birds enjoyed more benefits than just lack of sleep, soggy clothes, and the joy of being some of the first to cross the threshold into Apple's latest Retail Utopia; they also probably got to miss most of the traffic nightmares. In what must have been a spectacular display of poor planning, the new mall drew some 50,000 shoppers, all of whom had to duke it out for 6,400 parking spaces-- a scene that some described as "insanity" and "worse than Christmas," but which we like to think of as "the climactic scene in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior." See, kids? Sometimes obsession really does pay off!

Speaking of obsession, we can't help but notice that the "Coming Soon" section has once again vanished from Apple's retail page. From this we infer that Apple doesn't plan to have another store ready for a grand opening this coming weekend, which means the company is starting up slowly after its store-opening hiatus. That's probably wise; after three months of inactivity, we wouldn't want Apple to pull a groin muscle or anything. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) Maybe the week after...