Okay, sure, clock speeds in megahertz aren't even a remotely accurate way to gauge the relative speeds of two chips with different architectures. In many tests, a 450 MHz G3 absolutely trounces a 550 MHz Pentium III-- but try telling Joe Consumer that. Apple made a big push a while back to persuade the buying public that the G3 is "up to twice as fast," but we imagine a lot of people labor under the misguided impression that megahertz is an absolute rating of processor speed, and one look at the specs for Macs and similarly-priced or cheaper Wintel boxes tells them that the Wintels are "at least 100 faster." Frustrating, right? Now imagine how frustrated you'd be if you were a marketing guy at Apple...

So for Apple's sake, we at AtAT constantly dream of a day when the PowerPC performance lead is not only apparent when poring over obscure benchmark results, but also when taking a quick glance at raw processor clock speeds. The fastest shipping desktop Wintels currently house a 550 MHz Pentium III, we believe. Okay, so a Power Mac G3/450 is faster-- but imagine if it were a Power Mac G3/600 instead. Then there'd be no question about which was faster, whether you referenced benchmark results, real-world tests, or the common knowledge that "600 is more than 550." Too bad that's not going to happen anytime soon; the best we could (semi-)realistically hope for was a match in MHz at the high end. And for a brief period, it looked like the Mac might be catching up to Wintel in the MHz race: MacInTouch reported that Apple was preparing one of its anxiously-awaited "speed bumps" this Thursday, which would raise the processor speeds across the entire Power Macintosh line. The low-end system at $1599 would cruise along at 450 MHz, the mid-range systems would zoom forward to 500 MHz, and the $2999 high-end crusher would streak ahead to 550 MHz-- bringing parity to the Mac in the megahertz race.

Unfortunately, MacInTouch has since pulled the info about the speed bump, citing "conflicting dealer reports," so it's a distinct possibility that, while the Mac's PowerPC (arguably) holds the actual speed lead, it may be lagging in the megahertz running for quite a while longer. If we had to make a guess, we'd bet that a more moderate speed bump from 350/400/450 to 400/450/500 would be more likely-- if, indeed, a speed bump is in the cards at all this week. But in the meantime, we're just going to sit here with our fingers crossed, constantly reloading the Apple Store page, and hoping for some big numbers at some small prices...