Tom Yager: “In his keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the Power Mac G5 is the world’s fastest PC. He used SPEC (System Performance Evaluation Corporation) benchmark results to support that claim… The test results are invalidated by severely lopsided testing conditions.”

If this is to be believed, it’s quite a shame, especially when processor specs should be taken with a grain of salt. My understanding is SPEC relies heavily on the CPU (not a complete system) and has very little bearing in real-world use. Yager does bring this point to light.

“Apple’s real-world performance demos were impressive enough to make Jobs’ point… The Power Mac G5 shows major ass-kicking potential.”

So now if the real-world tests are to be believed, you can’t deny how impressive Apple’s Power Mac G5 is.

FYI: Want RSS feeds from the BBC, ASAP?

Hmm. Must have been in an altered state.

MacCentral: “Apple’s new chip, which they call the G5 and IBM calls the PowerPC 970, marks the beginning of a new era for Apple. The PowerPC 970 is the first modern PowerPC to embrace a 64-bit architecture.”

Everything you really need to know about G5 and the new Power Macs is in this somewhat lengthy article.

Check out the live coverage of Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC now!

Tomorrow is the start of the 2003 Worldwide Developers Conference and it’s no secret Apple has been throwing a lot of hype at it. The one thing that’s really made me upset with them is their lack of support (mostly hardware related) to the professional community. Yeah, the iMacs are sweet little machines and iApps are great, but I’m never buying one. Well, WWDC 2003 should change all of that. We officially know they’ll already be showing off Panther, the next version of OSX, and a ton of technologies aimed strictly at developers. Very good start. Unofficially, we should be seeing a lot more. Reports and rumors all point to new a completely new pro desktop lineup to replace the ever aging and comparatively slow G4 pro desktops.

What I expect is to purchase a Power Mac G5 sometime in the next week, have it ship by mid-July, and come with Mac OSX 10.3.

I guess we’ll see by tomorrow 10am PDT. Check here for live updates around that time.

Well I’m back from my trip to Arizona. Yes, back from 110 degree AZ weather to cold and rainy SoCal. I’ll tell (and show) ya all about it later.

I need to come up with a better name for Best Buy Tuesdays because I’m going there less and less to get my stuff. Can ya think of a better one?

Anyway, I took home a couple of DVDs today. First was Equilibrium. Never heard of it? Don’t worry. No one else has either. It came out last December when no one sees movies like that and was quickly dismissed by critics because it was considered to be a cheap rip off of the Matrix. The only thing Equilibrium has in common with the Matrix is it’s set in the future and there are a lot of guns. If you’re a sci-fi fan, this is a must see.

I also picked up Narc and am watching the DVD extras right now. Make no doubt about it. This is one of the most impressive flicks ever made. It displays the very best performances from two great blue-blood actors, a plot that never tires, and an ending that you wont forget. I did a small review of it at the beginning of the year that you can check out here.

So by now everyone has seen the officially released photos of the 2004 BMW 5-series and to be completely honest, I’ve come to like the new design (rear end is still a bit strange to me). Today, though, we get to see a spy shot of the 500hp M5 variant. Very tasty. More info here.

I’ve been listening to the new Metallica album for the last couple of weeks now and I can confidently say St. Anger is my least favorite studio album ever. It’s so bad, it actually makes Load and REloaded much better albums and a lot more enjoyable to listen to again.

I really don’t know what to say. Yeah, it’s harder, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. The lyric are down right sloppy and poorly thought out. James’ voice is showing its age. Bob Rock needs to be shot for producing such a poor quality album. No, I mean “poor quality” literally which is quite a surprise considering he did the very tightly, well produced “black album”. The voice tracks are leveled so much higher than the other tracks and the guitars sound very scratchy and rough. I think they were going for that feel of “rawness”, but it ultimately comes out sounding like a quick and dirty rehearsal. Absolutely terrible.

The only good I’ve found so far in St. Anger is that it’s made me re-visit all of my older Metallica albums which is easily some of the greatest music ever put together. It’s just too bad St. Anger can’t and wont be thrown into that class.

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