So you're a big fan of Apple's new "Tanks" commercial for the Power Mac G4. And really, what's not to love? It's short, sweet, funny, and to the point-- the G4 is so powerful, it's the first personal computer ever classified by the government as a supercomputer, and therefore a weapon that can't be exported to certain "sensitive" countries-- no Pentium-based PC can claim that. Best of all, it's true. Right?

Well, sort of. This is advertising, after all; if you're expecting to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a thirty-second TV commercial, you might want to take your "gullibility" settings down a notch or two. For instance, the G3 really was "up to twice as fast" as the Pentium II-- according to Bytemarks, which few people seem to take at all seriously. In reality, most testing labs that pitted the G3 against the PII discovered that the G3 was faster in some tests, slower in others, and perhaps a little bit faster overall. Similarly, Apple really can ship the G4 to Russia, given the U.S. government's relaxation of export controls last August. They simply choose not to.

Not that anyone could blame them, mind you. According to a CNET article pointed out by longtime faithful viewer Jerry O'Neil, just because recent changes to the export laws make it possible to ship G4s to India, China, etc., that doesn't make it practical. Apparently Apple would have to track every single G4 sold to "third-tier" countries, all the way down to the end-user level: the government would require that Apple be able to "identify who has purchased the product." Talk about an administrative nightmare. Sure, they could go by registration info, but what are the odds that Saddam Hussein actually fills out and sends in his registration cards? (We bet he doesn't pay his shareware fees, either.) So for all intents and purposes, the "Tanks" ad isn't kidding, and we can't fault Apple for stretching the truth a teeny bit.