Rotten Apples

It was announced this week, much to the surprise and shock of the Apple faithful, that future Macs would incorporate the Intell processor, the same chip that has powered the "dark side" of computing for all these years. This news is akin the housing industry informing the American public it will replace the venerable toilet with french bidets. Suddenly, our idea of being special is being shaken to the core.
We have always touted, with the encouragement of Apple, our Power PC architecture as being superior to that of the Intell x-86. In many ways, it clearly was, despite the fact that Motorola or IBM never kept pace when it came to raw Gigahertz. But what it boiled down to, overall, was the elegant integration of hardware, software, and innovation that made the Mac the Mercedes of computers. The PC guys used to brag of the gazillions of applications written for Windows, while the Mac people bragged of a system that actually worked most of the time. The true nature of the beast in both platforms has in truth been the Operating System.......Windows (or WinBlows, as we love to call it) for Intell based PC's, and OSX for Mac systems. From the very beginning, Windows has been a flawed, pathetic attempt at catch up to the elegant and intuitive OS that has driven the Mac. With the advent of OSX, Apple fine-tuned the OS into an Operating System that laughed at viruses, rarely ever crashed, and just simply worked. Every application written for the platform has been far superior in stability and ease of use compared to any of it's Windows counterparts. And Apple has worked well within the Windows oriented community, increasingly compatible with Windows files and servers. The one major caveat that Apple has had to deal with is price........a BMW costs more than a Volkswagen, and a superior computer doesn't come cheap either. Despite this, it turns out that a similarly configured PC would end up costing the same if not more than the Mac, so even that argument has lost allot of steam. It all boils down to getting what you pay for, actually, and if you want cheap, you get cheap.
Now, due to IBM's inability to deliver on performance promises with it's G-5 chip, Steve has decided that going with the Intell processor will enable Apple to deliver better performing Macs than IBM was willing or able to provide. What remains to be seen is whether or not Apple will be able to continue building computers that clearly stand apart form it's competitors using Windows, and most importantly, maintain the Macs reputation as a computer that works like it should and remains fairly immune to the viruses, trojan horses, spy-ware, and all those other things that make the Windows environment such a pain to work in. We, the Apple loyalists have every reason to be afraid.......to be VERY afraid. But, it was Steve Jobs who made Apple what it is today, and we can only hope he can continue to lead the way in innovation and superior product as he has consistently over the years. If not, we'll ALL be left to rot in the clutches of Microsoft, and that will be a very bad thing.