Did Apple cook the books for the new G5?
Steve Jobs announced the latest PC from Apple on Monday, claiming that the new 64-bit PowerMac G5 trounces the fastest Intel chips currently on the market. For anyone seriously interested in checking out the details of these benchmarking tests, Apple has made available a resource for that purpose on their website (at the previous link).
Well, funny thing about the Internet is that you've got fact-checkers waiting around every corner to keep you honest. Marc Hachman at ExtremeTech.com raises some questions about the benchmarking process used by the independent testing lab with which Apple contracted to rate its new machines. Seems that Apple had the lab do a little "tweaking" to make sure the G5 would be advantaged in ways that the Intel PC's weren't.
Hachman gives Apple the benefit of the doubt where he can, but he still concludes:
[I]f you've designed the best system, prove it. Open it up for examination. Publish the benchmarks. Back up your claims. Don't leave room for doubting Thomases like myself to poke through testing documents and raise questions – questions that we'll hopefully be able to persuade Apple to respond to.I used to be apathetic about Apple; my apathy then transitioned to disdain after my experience with the iMac I bought last summer. (In short: beautiful machine, but dumbly suited to real-world issues such as cost and upgrades.) Now I'm pretty much convinced that Steve Jobs has been overselling his products for quite some time. To him, everything's a revolution (he leading the charge into the future, of course; images come to mind of him rallying a sullen division of soldiers who are hopelessly outmatched against their bigger and faster foe) -- but as a visionary, he is too far removed from the real-world concerns of the people he's trying to rally. So the truth gets stretched a little. Some don't mind. But there comes a point with even the most credulous of rational people where a man can overdraw his trust account. If Apple loses its credibility, it will lose possibly the best thing it has going for it: the loyalty of its customer base.
Short of any major unexpected developments -- such as Apple switching to use Intel architecture -- I wouldn't be surprised if this is the final or penultimate line of PC's that Apple releases before sliding completely into a niche as a high-end, low-volume boutique computer house.
Posted by Matt at June 25, 2003 2:36 AM
