gwynarion
I stole the Sun
I found this article on one of the forums I frequent and thought that it would be appropriate to share here. I am not qualified to evaluate whether or not all of the assertions made by the author are true or not, so I post it here as raw information and subject for discussion and debate.
This is just the beginning of a very long article so click here to read the rest: http://www.applelust.com/oped/amc/archives/amc030718.shtmlThe Smell Of Fear
On June 23, 2003 Apple officially unveiled the PowerMac G5 machines that use IBM's new 64 bit PPC 970 processors as well as a host of very high end technologies packed into the new aluminum case. Steve Jobs hosted a presentation that showed the test results obtained by Veritest comparing a 3 GHz Pentium 4 based Dell Dimension 8300 vs. a 1.8 GHz single processor G5 and a Dell Precision 650 workstation sporting dual 3 GHz Xeon processors vs. a 2.0 GHz dual PPC 970 PowerMac.
Almost before the presentation had finished the Wintel portion of the web started screaming its usual denials and making charges that Apple somehow cheated on the tests. In fact, one paid Wintel oriented writer at CNET.com actually "predicted" that Apple would cheat on G5 benchmarks. How dare Apple claim a mere Macintosh could be more powerful than a mighty Dell?! The problem is that <a href="http://www.veritest.com/" target="_blank">Veritest</a> had provided detailed proof of how they ran the tests, but never fear, the Wintellers never let mere facts and reality stand in the way of a well established prejudice. Nothing new here. This absurd behavior has been an ongoing circus for many years. What is different this time was that Apple and Veritest posted the benchmarking in gruesome detail, unlike Intel's secretive methodologies, and the Wintel Weenies immediately denied the published facts in an effort to maintain their delusions of Wintellian superiority. This time they went too far.
I have spent the better part of the past several weeks checking out the facts in the case. I did something that few if any of the Apple-hating Wintel accusers did... I actually read the Veritest lab reports. I also checked out Veritest's reputation for honesty in the high tech industry and found that Veritest is squeaky clean, unlike their Wintel fanatic accusers. I frequented geek sites to find out the real facts about the technical accusations and found that the general opinion was (when they were being charitable...) that the original sources of the accusations were at best, highly incompetent. Of course, none of the real facts discussed by the in-the-know types ever made it to the general media. After all, truth is not usually a good sell to the Wintel world. Besides, the Wintel flacks might jeopardize their paychecks if they told the truth.
I also discovered the point of origin of the false accusations that have been circulating all over the Wintel oriented web media. The source will be named later in this article.
I think that it is possible that two companies involved in the test (Veritest and Luxology) may have their legal departments exploring the possibility of filing libel lawsuits against those who made what are appearing more and more to be deliberately false statements. That may be part of the reasons for Intel's curious response to the tests. More on that later.
First of all, here is a compendium of the false claims made against Apple, Veritest and the other companies involved, and the truths I uncovered.