Ho hum... Kind of a sleeper of a day in the Mac realm, isn't it? Not much going on. It's one of those days when we develop a newfound appreciation for the hidden depths of drama and strife in something as seemingly humdrum as a Final Cut Pro rebate offer. Yes indeedy, it takes a day like this one to make you recognize the inherent struggle of good versus evil lurking just beneath the benign surface of $300 off Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro when purchased together with any Mac from now until February 28th. Why, when you think about it, the scenario is so action-packed and dripping with crowd-pleasing turmoil, it could have given Kill Bill: Vol. 1 a run for its money at the box office.

Okay, no it couldn't.

So instead, we're reduced once again to scrounging for rumor crumbs at the tables of the usual suspects, and thank heavens that AppleInsider saw fit to post still another report on IBM's ever-increasing "Holy Yikes" quotient as pertains to upcoming PowerPCs. Whether or not you swallow Apple's "fastest, most powerful" hype, even the Wintel world admits that the dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is at least on par with the zippiest hardware the other team's been able to crank out-- and if you ask us, that's just fine. After the Dark Years of Motorolan G4 foot-dragging (heck, sometimes we wondered if those feet were superglued to the linoleum, or indeed if there were even feet to drag in the first place), we're just thrilled to be back in the game.

But if AppleInsider's "new source" is legit, there's a possibility that the Mac's speed advantage will be incontestable as early as ten months from now. Remember when El Stevo announced that the G5 would hit 3 GHz by sometime next summer? Well, apparently that G5 won't even be the same chip as today's G5, in the sense that it'll be a PowerPC 980 derived from the upcoming POWER5 architecture, as opposed to the current 970 which is the mutant little brother of IBM's POWER4 server chip. PowerPC 980s are allegedly going to be sampling in April, with production of 3 GHz chips in volume by "late summer."

"So what," you ask? Well, aside from bringing Macs ever closer to Wintels in terms of clock speed (we know, we know, megahertz doesn't matter-- tell it to the market share numbers), reportedly preliminary testing of early alpha samples of the 980 is revealing "huge performance gains" over existing 970 processors, that's so what. And if today's 970 is already at least competitive with the best the x86 world has to offer (and at best the reason why Intel CEO Craig Barrett has gone back to sleeping fitfully on rubber sheets), then the 980 may well rocket the Mac way out in front of the rest of the pack. Not that Intel, AMD, etc. are standing still, mind you, but it sounds like IBM might be in the zone, development-wise. Stand back and watch the magic, people.

Remember how a television commission in the United Kingdom recently banned Apple's Power Mac G5 commercial for making allegedly unproven and unprovable claims that the G5 is the "world's fastest, most powerful personal computer"? Remember how we noted that it might have been unwise of the UK to go poking at Apple's squishy bits like that, considering that the company has only just gotten over what we have to assume was a years-long grudge against Great Britain, what with all the Expo no-shows and software cancellations and layoffs and whatnot? Banning Apple's only G5 TV spot seemed likely to start the petty feud anew, which certainly couldn't be good for anyone involved.

Well, it looks like someone finally alerted the shadowy secret consortium of puppetmasters pulling the strings in that little corner of the globe, because while as far as we know the ad is still verboten (though we hear that the top dogs at the Independent Television Commission have mysteriously all gone missing), we're seeing evidence of what appears to be a conciliatory gesture intended to mitigate the Wrath of Steve. It's a subtle one, too, taking the form of decidedly pro-Mac sentiments in an interesting article in The Times.

The premise goes like this: take a longtime Mac user and stick him in front of a state-of-the-art laptop running Microsoft's latest OS, Windows XP Media Center. Then take a self-professed Wintel nut who is "proud to say that [his] machine is always in pieces" and fling him headlong into the welcoming waters of Mac OS X. (Panther, natch.) It's sort of a Freaky Friday for the tech set-- only without the cherubic grins of a young Jodie Foster, the squeaky-clean aura of mid-'70s Disney, or much hope of an eventual remake starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Oh, and not on a Friday.

And the Oscar goes to... (these envelopes are always so hard to open)... Mac OS X! While the Mac user kicking XP's tires admits that "generally speaking, it works well," he also notes a "feeling that something nasty and utterly incomprehensible is lurking just below the surface" and by way of example offers the following message that appeared while installing some software: "A read-only file c: inetwh32.dll was found while attempting to copy files to the destination location." At the same time he's chock full of questions: "Why do the applications always quit when you close a window? Why can't the system display Japanese and Russian properly? Why do the bubble messages designed to help irritate me so much?" Of course, he answers his own questions when he concludes that while Windows is "designed by people who know a lot about computers," Macs are "designed by people who know a lot about people."

In contrast, what of the Wintel geek test-driving Mac OS X? This one quote pretty much says it all: "After only three hours of using Apple's latest operating system, 10.3, I started to wonder if I should have made the change years ago." If that's not high enough praise for you, he also describes the installation of the OS as "annoyingly easy," Internet setup as "a doddle," and networking it with his home Wintel "simple-- something that even my Windows laptop struggles with occasionally." Really, his only complaint is that there aren't enough games, but then that's valid and exactly the sort of criticism we'd expect from a guy who has enough free time on his hands to have his PC in pieces all the time, so, cool.

In short, that article was way too positive not to have been a plant by Top Secret UK Consortium operatives hoping to avoid another extended snit from Apple-- and that, too, is just fine by us, since we'll take good Apple press any way we can get it. Here's hoping that Steve accepts the peace offering and doesn't call in an air strike or something. Gee, perhaps the Consortium could see their way to getting Apple Records to back off, too...

Well, here's one nice thing about slow Apple news days: we can indulge in petty but timely Microsoft-bashing without feeling guilty about taking up airtime that should have been used for something vaguely on-topic. And the good news is, there's always something in the news about Microsoft that's just begging for ridicule. It's one of the few sure things in life, along with death, taxes, spam, and the occasional totally-sealed pistachio shell that can't be opened no matter how hard you try until you finally give up sobbing in frustration, shave your head, and join a cult that you think will love you for who you are despite your pistachio-opening deficiencies, but really just wants you to sign over the funds in your 401(k).

Right. Well, we seem to have wandered a bit, but hey, it's a slow news day, so it's okay.

Anyway, back to the omnipresent Microsoft ridicule thing. Don't believe us? Well, c'mon, let's take a spin through the day's tech news. Faithful viewer John Corso pointed out that TechWeb News reveals yet more security holes in Redmondware (five this time around, with three being ranked "critical," meaning "reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally bad"), several of which "let attackers remotely execute code on compromised machines." Note that this comes just a day or so after it came to light that Microsoft plans to market itself aggressively as way more secure than Linux because it fixes its bugs more quickly; not quickly enough, though, apparently, since Microsoft admits that "known exploits" of all three critical flaws have been posted all over the 'net.

A fluke, you say? Well, than how about some Monkeyboy Paw-in-Mouth for the second course? Faithful viewer Barton notes an interview with The Ballmer in AlwaysOn, in which he reveals that he's not content to claim Linux is merely less secure than Windows: now he's decided to claim that it's less innovative, as well. "I look at Linux and see a competitor, and I think we can offer better value than that competitor as long as we're pushing the innovation front, because the competitor is not innovating." And what sort of innovation in Windows is Ballmer talking up so strongly? Why, innovation in security, of course: "Linux hasn't blazed the trail, new approaches to security," he intones in complete sincerity. Although, you know, he's sort of got a point: we haven't heard of the Linux community doing anything nearly as innovative as shipping software loaded with security flaws and then offering a quarter of a million dollars in reward money to anyone who can catch the guys who write the viruses that exploit them.

Aaaaaand for dessert, something short and sweet: faithful viewer Andrew Norris noted a Reuters article which reports that Microsoft is dealing with antitrust charges in Europe by insisting that "it would be forced to offer European consumers a substandard version of Windows if the European Union makes it rewrite its operating system." First of all, way to threaten a continent, guys. And secondly, "substandard Windows"? Pardon us, but we have to go walk our "canine dog," feed our "feline cat," and then watch a "crappy UPN sitcom."