“If there’s ever been a personal computer that everyone’s gotta get, it’s the Apple Power Mac G5. Even x86 fanatics have to admit that the G5 has everything they could possibly want in a personal computer. The G5 is a screamer, with a 1GHz front-side bus and an IBM 64-bit Power4 processor, and it’s as good-looking as it is fast,” writes John Taschek for eWeek.
Taschek continues, “Unfortunately, it appears that Apple has stolen a particularly tainted page from traditional PC vendors. Once, Steve Jobs marketed the Mac as the tool for individualists (think 1984’s Super Bowl commercial) and then, for people who had some intellectual capacity (the Think campaign) and eventually, as a computer that simply worked without headaches and aggravation (the switch campaign), Apple now is taking on the PC industry with ‘benchmarketing.'”
“Don’t get me wrong. I definitely want a G5. Everybody does
I actually agree with this. The performance of real-world, processor-intensive apps would’ve done a lot more alone to peak people’s interest, than benchmarking, although there have been some more recent independent tesing done that also comes out in Apple’s favor.
No they shouldn’t have. Because the first thing the PC press would’ve done would have been to run their own “biased” tests, and of course the conclusion would have been something like “while the new Apple is much faster than it’s predecessor, it still lags behind current top end Wintel platforms.
It needed to be shown to be fast, affordable and able. It looks great, always was going to. It’ll be built superbly – they all are (cube troubles aside it still looked awesome). It needed to erode the last caveats of PC users complaints – now it IS faster, it IS affordable. IMO the last trick would be getting a game like Half-Life2 out on it – show gamers how it smashes PC’s up and watch the orders flood in…
Well the biggest argument the PeeCee weenies had was that Apple never performed SPEC benchmarks (which I find rather useless since they don’t show realworld performance). So Apple decided to shut them up by showing SPEC numbers. Of course now the PeeCee community will come up with some conspiracy theory that Apple fudged those numbers, by tweaking the machine or something, of course forgeting that every company (including Intel) does such things, well DUH!!!
Benchmarks are only half of the process. The other half is peer review. Members of the computing community debate all of the benchmark factors, results, etc. This is a good thing. I agree that real world app demonstrations are much better at driving the point home, because people want to see the results.
My guess is that the computer-media are no longer impressed or intrigued by Apple’s “Photoshop Bake-off” application tests. Every time Apple does one, we get to read opinions on how the applications are cherry-picked for the Mac and the PC is somehow hobbled, and that the only reason Apple does application tests is because the processor doesn’t have the muscle to go benchmark-to-benchmark with Intel or AMD processors. Now Apple has a machine that gets comparable benchmark numbers, so they run a benchmark test. All of a sudden the media are all over it, and Apple gets plenty of pages, usually two per site if Joswiak gives an interview defending the benchmarking. The whole point is that it’s now debatable whether the G5 is a faster machine�unlike the G4, where “speed didn’t matter”.
Just think of all the free advertising. Introduce the G5 without benchmarking? Hell no. They should have cheated! Think of the coverage then!
Amen!!!! Nuff said.
What a load of self invented tosh. The G5 is faster than any wintel equivalent, incorrect benches or no incorrect benches. And when these things start getting real life user reviews nobody is gonna be in doubt. The only thing I would add to any Apple marketing campaign would be ‘words fastest personal computer meets worlds most advanced operating system’.
One word – P.R., which usually means pork roast but in this case means Public Relations, which, negative or positive, is always a good thing.
I propose a 1 day shootout.
Apple should invite Wintel disciples to show up with whatever they want provided it runs on both Apple’s G5 and their preferred Wintel hardware, then let them go head to head.
It doesn’t evewn matter if it wins or loses in a a benchmark test. Apple is the Gucci of the computer industry, and like gucci it might not be as fuctional as wal mart, but you are above the norm
An email exchange between myself and the author.
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Absolutely! You gotta love it.
—–Original Message—–
From: Frank
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:27 AM
To: Taschek, John
Hi,
You may not like the G5 benchmarks but you have to admit that doing them got Apple a lot of press. A whole lot of press and now the argument is not why Macs are slow and cost more but rather why did Apple hype the benchmarks when they didn’t need too. Not a bad marketing move on
Apple’s part I would say.
Frank