What do you mean you're already starting to get bored with Tiger? The Tigeriffic Stevenote wasn't even two weeks ago, the operating system won't ship for at least six months (and possibly up to a year from now), all the hands-on reports are based solely on an early developer release, and you're bored? How can you... What could possibly... Ooo. Seriously, you'd need to be a four-year-old on Pixie Stix and coffee grounds to have an attention span that short. For crying out loud, people, read a book once in a while or something, or pretty soon you won't even be able to sit still for anything longer than a Pepsi commercial.

Okay, fine, we admit it: we're starting to get bored with the whole Tiger thing, too.

And yes, we also get distracted by shiny objects, we feel that the 30-second commercial is the ideal format for any narrative worth absorbing, and the last time we read anything longer than the ingredients list on a bag of Baked Lays was when we skimmed the fine print on a tube of Krazy Glue to find out how to get our hands unstuck from the side of a Coke machine. (Don't ask.) Happy?

So, yeah, we have to agree that there's only so much in-depth discussion of Dashboard and Spotlight we can stand before we have to go bat a sparkly ball of tin foil around on the kitchen floor for ten or fifteen minutes to loosen back up. Thankfully, though, someone has finally posted some new information on the Tiger developer release, and it's all about speed: Geek Patrol has Xbench scores in various categories as measured in Jaguar, Panther, and pre-release Tiger, all performed on the same 1.6 GHz Power Mac G5, so you can get a sense of how Tiger compares speedwise to what you're using now.

Aaaaand we can see that you're already reaching for the remote, so we'll just get to the goods, shall we? Generally speaking, the results are promising; in all but one category-- the user interface-- Tiger performed as well as or marginally better than Panther did, which, in turn, usually ran faster than Jaguar. And the fact that Tiger's UI score is only 95% that of Panther's is hardly reason to beat yourself about the head and shoulders while emitting low moans, since Tiger is still very pre-release with lots of debugging code, and Apple has plenty of time to optimize the bejeezus out of the thing once it has the feature set locked down and a bit more of the code fleshed out. (Then again, we suppose they have equally as much time to shovel in the bloat and slow the thing down to a crawl, but for the most part, that seems to be more of a Redmond dance move than how the players boogie down in Cupertino.)

We've got a one-hand/other-hand thing to consider, however. On the one hand, these tests were all run on a low-end G5, and we know that Tiger is supposed to be tweaked heavily for maximum G5 efficiency, so the performance gains vs. Panther might not quite match up on your G3 and G4 systems. On the other hand, the G5 in question was a single-processor model, so if you've got a dual-processor G4, your "Look Ma, Two Chips" status might lead to bigger boosts than having a single G5 might give you. Mind you, this is all wild and baseless speculation on our part, but it's the only way we're going to stay interested long enough to finish this scene without getting distra Hey, what's that shiny thing over th

So have you blown an obscene amount of credit on songs at the iTunes Music Store over the past week, desperately trying to score a free 20 GB iPod by purchasing at just the right time? And now you've got a whole Purchased Music playlist packed full of songs you don't even want because you were trying to maximize your chances for success? Well, uh, gee, we suppose we should have mentioned this last week, but didn't you bother to read the official rules? Yes, they're kinda long and packed with legalese, as these things usually are, but you only had to get as far as Rule 1 to see what we're talking about. Legalese, shmegalese; Rule 1 is three words long and printed in all-caps just so Apple can be sure you understand: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.

Yup, certain states have laws prohibiting contests in which an initial monetary outlay is a condition of entry, presumably because it constitutes gambling or something. Whatever the reason, though, the upshot is that you can enter the 100 Million Song Countup Giveaway without buying a thing by "sending an email to Apple at itunes100@apple.com via the iTunes 'Tell a Friend' feature." See, if you'd read more, you'd have known that, and you wouldn't have a Purchased Music playlist full of Connie Francis Christmas songs right now. (Nothing against Ms. Francis, mind you; she's fabulous.)

Now, hold on there, buckaroo-- we can hear those wheels in your head turning from here, and before you hatch your brilliant evil scheme to flood Apple with free entries, you should perhaps read a little further down. Rule 4 states clearly that "the use of any automated launching or entry software or any other mechanical or electronic means that permits the entrant to automatically enter repeatedly is prohibited. Mechanically generated entries will be discarded and may result in total and permanent disqualification from the Promotion." So unless you want to be banned outright, keep those AppleScripts in your pants-- and if you've heard about the "separated by commas" method of sending multiple "Tell a Friend" messages at once, do your best to forget about it, unless you want to end up banned from the contest completely.

Oh, you don't think it can happen, do you? Then maybe you should check out this recent article at Engadget, which describes the plight of a couple of guys with an iPod jones and way too much free time on their hands. Reportedly they "entered about 3000 times with the Tell a Friend option two days ago by using the separated by commas trick" and wound up receiving a copy of Rule 4 in their inboxes from Apple, who also subsequently "banned" the mad clickers "from emailing anything @apple.com." Which is pretty harsh, when you think about it, because if it happened to you, not only would you be barred from entering the giveaway, but you'd also be unable to send your daily missives to sjobs@apple.com telling El Stevo that he'd look really good onstage in a stovepipe hat and muttonchop sideburns.

So if you're going to do the "free entry" thing, keep it legit; we suspect that getting banned by Apple from anything might seriously affect your credit rating. Enjoy!

Yes, we're well aware that it's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, but even though this was technically a short week, it was definitely also one of the longest short weeks of our lives. Since we'd desperately like to close the books on this mutant time-dilated week from the Scary Hot Place, we're going to keep this as short and sweet as we possibly can (which probably isn't saying much). Besides, the appeal of this tidbit is pretty esoteric, and probably limited primarily to longtime Mac fans who remember the sort of media coverage Apple was getting during the Amelio Era of 1996ish. Everyone else can just use this time for independent study.

It was faithful viewer Joel who tipped us off; there's an opinion piece by one of the contributing editors over at InfoWorld which discusses the ramifications of the Department of Homeland Security officially recommending that patriotic Americans stop using Internet Explorer because it's just too much of a security risk. And while we mentioned that whole thing on last week's Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, we bring it up again now because it's prompted InfoWorld to slap Microsoft with the very adjective the press once reserved almost exclusively for Apple. Yes, folks, Microsoft is officially "beleaguered."

If you recall the Amelio days, then you know what we're talking about; to the press, Apple wasn't Apple-- it was beleaguered Apple, always and forevermore. Even the most innocuous stories mentioning Apple in passing would still include the mandatory "B" word and would be sure to mention the company's imminent demise: "Sunnyvale resident Janie Morris, 27, tripped over a discarded watermelon Thursday as she walked home from the headquarters of beleaguered Apple Computer, where she works as a receptionist for the doomed computer manufacturer," that sort of thing. Heck, it was the incessant over-the-top doom 'n' gloom news coverage of the Apple deathwatch that prompted us to start producing an online Apple-flavored melodrama in the first place, so you can imagine our nostalgia.

What's particularly sweet about this reference to "beleaguered Microsoft" is that there's no indication that the author did it with Apple in mind; he writes strictly from a Windows-centric IT perspective, and is probably totally unaware of the term's history. As far as we can tell, this is a completely unprompted, organic, and honest use of the word, devoid of any knowledge of the term's prior exclusive association with Apple. This guy's not a bitter Mac fan with an axe to grind; he's just a Windows geek who honestly believes that Microsoft is now "beleaguered."

Oh, how sweet it is. Now all we need is for someone to suggest that Microsoft "shut itself down and give the money back to the shareholders" and we'll be in hog heaven...