Has Apple closed the speed gap? I'd say "yes". There are undoubtedly certain areas where the G5 will be outperformed and the G5 will outperform. It will be interesting to see, since the G5's bus speed scales up with the processor speed, how much of a performance gap will that make between it and anything else that gets thrown at them over the long haul.
It's nice to see that Apple is competitive from a speed standpoint, but it's also easy to lose perspective about what Macs are all about when looking at speed races. For me, Macs are about elegance and ease of use more than speed. Getting something done quickly is part of overall productivity, but I've learned the hard way not to ignore how well something works, how easy it is to use, and how much one enjoys using it. I switched over from Windows because I felt I gained more than I lost. I have to admit, though, that if I got the "AMD equivalent" speed back, the rewards of switching will be doubly-sweet!
Would I trade in my dual 1.25 G4 for a 1.6 G5? I think not. I might be tempted to do that for the 1.8Ghz if I could live without the extra storage space the G5 does not have. I did wind up trading in my dual 1.0 Ghz G4 PowerMac for a 1.8 GHz G5 iMac, but that decision had as much to do with "form factor" and noise as it did with performance. I'm still using my dual 1.25 Ghz G4 for video work. Hopefully, I'll be able to step up to a dual G5 PowerMac in 2005!
(For a Mac only comparison of a 1.6 GHz G5 to my two Power Macs using Xbench 1.1, click here!)