[fjdouse]

Toppers? Interesting, sounds like an expression used in sexual contexts which only friends of Dorothy will get... but I digress...

Far be it from me to disagree with my web developer friend above, but only Mac-myopics are saying that Intel Macs will be Macs and not PCs. You could call anything a Mac, but a simple logic is being overlooked about the PC thing. Windows runs on generic PCs, if Windows will run on an Intel Mac natively, then logically, an Intel Mac must be a PC (as in an generic IBM PC compatible), even if packaged and sold as something different. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then I'm afraid the chances are it's a duck. It's amusing to say the least to read the U-turns and the retractions, I could say some of it is two-faced. We've HAD to go from a position that the Mac experience is about the unique OS and hardware to it being just the OS, perhaps the same logic would apply if in 10 years Apple abandon Mac OS and use an Apple branded version of a Microsoft OS? We could try and convince ourselves that the Mac experience is all about iLife eh? Again, I rant...

Personally, although I accept the switch, it's only because I have to. I don't relish the idea of Apple producing x86 machines, I was attracted to a UNIX implementation where I wouldn't have to recompile a kernel to make a screensaver work, on unique PowerPC hardware, but the average Mac user cares little for the technicalities and frankly by what I've read before I humbly do not think many are able to understand the possible ramifications of what the switch could mean for the platform longer term. I won't even go into the subject about licensing it for chav PCs, quite possibly the most short-sighted and suicidal idea I've ever heard.

I think until Apple actually ANNOUNCE the first Intel Mac, people are quite literally, pi$$ing in the wind, nobody knows what protections and preventions Apple will put in place, I hope they put enough in to stop the majority of Chav-PC users from going through the grief of installing it on their boxes-of-woe. Hopefully they'll tie it into specific Apple hardware and try to make it run like a sack-o-cack on generic machines. It's all up in the air now, anything you see people doing -or not- in relationship to Tiger on x86 means NOTHING. Only dev kits have been issued, these cannot EVER tell you much about what the ACTUAL machines will be like, in hardware or software terms, and these idiots ILLEGALLY hacking and installing OS X on other machines could have wasted their time when the actual products start to appear.

Anyone who says or writes in their wee little blogs that they know what's coming, is basically talking out of their @rses and should be ignored on principle - ONLY Apple know what is going on.