Gee, what a surprise; Apple publishes benchmark results which show that the Power Mac G5 outscores the fastest Intel-based systems, and, as faithful viewer moff moff points out, everybody and his Windows-using grandmother comes scurrying out of the woodwork to cry foul. And why not? After all, the only reason benchmarks exist in the first place is to give the geeks something to fight about, because they sure as heck aren't for proving which hardware is actually faster or anything like that. So let's watch the fur fly, shall we?

Lots of the hubbub from the Intel apologists seems to stem from spl's soapbox at Haxial, where the allegedly Mac-using author makes several seemingly valid points about ways in which Apple stacked the deck in its own favor. He took a look through the details of the tests performed by Veritest and found all sorts of fishy fun facts-- for example, the way that the tested G5 used a "high-performance, single-threaded malloc library... geared for speed rather than memory efficiency...[and] unsuitable for many uses." Well, that doesn't sound too kosher, does it?

Moreover, on certain tests, the Intel Xeon's Hyperthreading feature was disabled, and used a compiler option that seemingly disabled performance-boosting SSE2 instructions as well. Finally, the G5's registers were manually tweaked "to enable memory Read By-pass," which implies that this is a benchmark-friendly feature that won't be turned on by default in actual shipping Power Macs. Meanwhile, The Register pointed out that Apple's claimed SPEC scores for the dual Xeon Dell system were much, much lower than Dell's reported scores for the same box. And since it couldn't possibly be Dell, obviously Apple's the filthy pack of cheating bottomfeeders trying to put one over on us all.

Or not. Believe it or not, Apple cares enough about the hardcore geeks trash-talking its benchmark methodology that hardware product marketing czar Greg Joswiak actually contacted Slashdot to try to set the record straight. Apparently memory read by-pass may well be enabled in shipping G5s, which is why is was enabled for the benchmarks. Yes, Apple's reported scores for the Dell were lower-- because they used the gcc compiler on all systems in an attempt to level the playing field, while Dell used Intel's own compiler, which one would certainly expect to deliver higher scores; "the Apple numbers could be higher with a different compiler, too." (Codewarrior, anyone?) Yes, Apple did turn off Hyperthreading in the Xeon-- because the Xeon scored higher without it. And no, Apple didn't disable SSE2; people who thought so simply misinterpreted the gcc options. In short, Joz claims that Apple went out of its way to be fair and maximize Intel's scores within the context of using the cross-platform gcc compiler. (No word on the super-secret special malloc library, though.)

Of course, you're allowed to believe whomever you want. Personally, given all the variables present when calculating SPEC scores, we've never considered them much beyond their marketing value. What we tend to trust is real-world performance, and the say-so of the people who write the cross-platform applications. When that crazy Mathematica guy says that the G5 is not only trouncing the Wintels but also beating up on high-end UNIX systems that cost twice as much, we see no reason to doubt that-- especially after that onstage bake-off in which Mathematica on the G5 flew past the Dell so fast we're pretty sure we heard a little sonic boom. We can hardly wait until August when people can run their own independent head-to-head tests to see what the real deal is.

Meanwhile, to get a sense of the sort of axe-grinding going on back at Haxial, check out this complaint: "Apple gives the price of the low-end G5 as '$1999,' and the high-end G5 as '$2999.' In other words, they have subtracted $1 from a $3000 computer to make it seem cheaper, which is absolutely ridiculous. This demonstrates that both Apple and Dell are willing to mislead people when stating their prices." Wait a minute, you mean that $2999 top-of-the-line Power Mac G5 is actually almost $3000?! But how could we possibly have been expected to know that without being told? Why, we're going to write our congressman about this vile attempt to bilk the general public; if we don't nip this nefarious practice in the bud now, eventually everyone's going to be pulling this "one dollar less" scam!

Okay, so, all talk of benchmarks aside, at the very least no one's seriously going to claim that the G5 doesn't totally spank the G4 halfway to next Tuesday, right? So, uh, when can we get one "to go"? This is the Year of the Notebook, after all, so when's the PowerBook G5 going to hit the shelves? We've got a hankerin' to tote around a portable that can solve a system of linear equations with a million unknowns-- just because we can.

Except, of course, we can't. Yet. And probably not for quite some time. According to MacCentral, everyone's favorite Apple cofounder recombinant clone Greg Joswiak (man, he's getting a lot of airtime lately, isn't he? Good for him!) has gone on the record as saying, "[the G5] is not going in a PowerBook anytime soon," "G4s are in every other part of [Apple's] product line," and therefore "Motorola remains very important to us." Gee... so maybe we shouldn't have sent Motorola that farewell PooPoo Platter just yet, huh?

Now, we can't say we're surprised that the PowerBook G5 is still a distant dream, since it's probably going to take a lot of doing to cram a G5 into such a tiny space. (We actually had a mild panic attack when we finally watched the keynote, because for a second we thought the G5 wafer was the G5 itself. Nothing like a microprocessor the same physical size as a vinyl copy of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", right?) Then there's the cooling issue; we can't wait to see a PowerBook with nine fans pumping away. The thing would probably lift off and become airborne. Plus, how long did we have to wait between the introduction of the G4 chip and its eventual use in a shipping laptop? Almost a year and a half.

But we have a sneaking suspicion that the Mac-using community isn't going to want to wait that long, and unless Apple releases a PowerBook G5 within a few months of the Power Mac shipping in August, there are going to be large-scale riots tearing civilization apart. So here's our solution: Apple should just take a full-fledged Power Mac G5, staple a 23-inch Cinema HD Display to it, and call that the first G5 portable. Granted, at 64.5 pounds, that's possibly stretching the definition of "portable" a bit, but c'mon, it's got handles, right? So what are you complaining about?

The AtAT staff has been in an introspective sort of mood, lately, and therefore we've been pondering some of life's imponderables. Like, which came first, the chicken or the egg? What's the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound? What did this blue fuzzy stuff that we found in the back of the fridge used to be, back when it went into the Tupperware? Are there really people out there who watch televised arm wrestling? And so on.

Well, it looks like our grey matter's going to be booking some overtime, because faithful viewer Carleton Britt just gave us a new koan to consider: is Sears too lame to contain Dell merchandise, or is Dell merchandise too lame to appear within Sears stores? According to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, the two companies have just killed a pilot program that put "try it and order" Dell kiosks into Sears locations. Reportedly Dell is enjoying some success with 57 similar kiosks in malls, but for some reason, the Sears kiosk program got canned after just four months. Both companies refuse to elaborate, simply calling the decision "mutual"; Dell added that "the lessons learned from [the Sears] experiment have been applied to the mall-based program." Whatever that means.

We should probably warn you that thinking too hard about the comparative lameness of Sears and Dell could in fact trigger a total mental breakdown. It's like staring into the depths of infinity itself; it's easy to get lost, so please be careful. And yes, we know we could have approached this whole subject from the classic AtAT "Mike Dell is so psychotically obsessed with Steve Jobs that he copycats Steve's every move" angle (Apple did pull out of Sears at least twice, after all), but we figured this way we'd get to bag on Dell and Sears in one shot. That's us; forever working to improve the efficiency of our smart-ass commentary to better serve you, the viewing audience. Service with a smirk!