It’s a fact that any one or any company that sets foot outside of mediocrity is doomed to be singled out for persecution. When we are talking about Apple it goes doubly so.
Now that Apple have a runaway success on their hands with the iPod they have set foot outside the comfort zone and the media (and that includes bloggers) have started on them. Silicon.com have just run an acidic piece tolling an iPod death-knell.
The tech media thrive on change, because its the way they sell copy and ultimately advertising space. Follow the money. It is not surprising then that they have a vested interest in the “next best thing”.
So whether it is cellphone music players (which you have to purchase the music and download it over the providers networks) or other music rental companies like Napster where access to the music you downloaded and paid for, stops working as soon as you stop paying (nice) the evangelising of technology by these outlets is biased to make you buy more stuff and spend more of your money, it isn’t necessarily good for you but you can be sure its good for them.
If there is advertising or sponsorship involved in the production of a magazine, blog, newspaper or TV program, you have to ask yourself why are these people saying what they are saying.

I guess the point I am trying to make is make your own value assessments and don’t follow others views without question.

Now here’s a little thought. I work for a company that uses 700 Macs and about 3000 PC’s.
We quite regularly swap PC hardware vendor. HP, IBM, Dell etc.
If the upcoming Mactel platform is OS agnostic, Apple are in an ideal place to make real inroads into the enterprise (or at least medium business) market.
Get the price point right and businesses will turn to Apple, who are renound for good quality hardware (and support in the US) for all their hardware no matter what OS is running on it. Apple are consistant with their manufacturing specs and a single hardware platform helps everyone. At the same time perhaps they’ll get some switchers to MacOS from Windows – hey its just an install away!

If you read any of the WWDC keynote stuff today you may have heard that there are changes afoot at Apple – i.e. the Intel thing. Something else notable was that the name of the next version of OS X is Leopard. I guess thats pretty apt. You know a leopard, changing spots, all that.
Just a thought.

Well they bloody went and did it.

I am of the opinion that it is good to know your enemy. It really helps if you know who you are up against.

For as long as I can remember the enemy was the duopoly of Microsoft and Intel. Wintel was a phrase that struck me with loathing.

There have of course been consistant rumours since the StarTrek project at Apple many years ago that they have been working on a intel compiled version of MacOS for the alternative processor platform. It turns out that StarTrek wasn’t the end of it.
NextStep, the ancestor of OS X, was originally developed for Motorola 68030 and then ported to x86 when the hardware side of the company was sold off and Next became OpenStep.
The OpenStep OS was ported to PowerPC when Apple bought the company and Jobs came back to Apple. Apparently, privately, all versions of the new OS have been also ported to Intel as well as PowerPC. Not only the OS either, every app that they have produced has also been tested on Mactel.

Jobs is quoted as saying that the complete trasition will be made by 2007 with the first machines in 2006.

My friend Dave, an exponent and staunch defender of the Wintel duopoly is going to dine out on this for months (possibly years). I’ll never hear the last of it.