News Apple testing guru banned from... testing

Haz is a busy boy. Not only does he keep a firm hand on the tillar here at bit, he finds the time to report for the Inq. His latest piece of reportage bemoans Apple's benchmarking:

TO ANYONE working in the technology press, the reluctance of Apple to send out review machines to magazines or websites is notorious. Almost every major Mac print publication gets the first look at new machines through partners and contacts in retail, rather than through Jobs himself. Call it picking your own fruit.

For a small website then, the chances of getting a review Mac machine are pretty slim, which led BareFeats owner Rob Morgan to come up with an interesting way of testing: in store.

Morgan has been running his site since 1995, and he has been a saviour of a Mac community begging for real-world testing. A hardware geek, he runs the performance figures that people want to see on the different flavours of Apple, so they can make their Mac-buying decisions.

Last week, however, he published numbers on the iMac G5, which Apple claims can be up to 3 times juicier than the iMac G4 in games such as Unreal Tournament and Halo. When Morgan tested these claims on an Apple retail store machine (he says that local staff were well aware of his practices, and he was even invited to give an in-store lecture on tweaking Macs) he found that there was only a difference of 11-12% between the machines.

More Apple sauce here

 

And people wonder why PC users are so anti-mac Its like living on the playground with Mr. Jobs: "Yea! My stuff is 3!! times as fast as last gen!! OMFG!!PWN!!11ONeOenoene"