Mark Your Scorecards, Please.
Forigve this little geek-out, but I'm feeling a bit old today. When I first became a member of the cult of Macintosh (could it have really been 20 years ago?) the evil empire was IBM and their ubiquitous market-share-owning PC architecture, which forced the non-Mac masses into faceless, bland conformity. Microsoft was an Apple hero for creating "Word" and providing some crucial software to ensure that Macintosh did not go the way of the Betamax.
Fast forward a few years, and IBM had become the Mac's new best friend, creating the PowerPC chip that brought Macs into the new millenium. Microsoft took over as the Emperor of Mean, ripping off the Mac OS, dumbing it down, and then selling it as a thing called "Windoze" (in Mac parlance.) Law suits and ill will between the two companies became legendary, but it sort of petered out when Apple and Microsoft made a huge financial pact and pledged to work together. It was a troubled marriage -- Microsoft's next Mac version of their Office Suite was notorious for being insultingly un-Maclike and nearly impossible to use, but an uneasy peace prevailed between the two companies.
That meant a new enemy was required and Intel gladly stepped in. Not long ago, Mac pundits were quipping that the "Intel Inside" sticker was a warning label and Apple ads parodied Intel's "men in bunny" suits campaign by showing them being fried by the superior power of the Mac. The Intel-based world, in hundreds of op-eds, labeled the Mac an expensive vanity machine, while furiously copying Mac's innovations into the next releases of their own hardware. Apple pretended not to notice and married Unix instead -- and that's where it was for a while.
Today, Apple announced that by the end of 2007, all Macintosh computers will be running on Intel chips.
As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Today's announcement leaves the "company to hate" position open. I've no doubt it will be filled, but by whom? There's always Microsoft, but that would be so "last century." -- Sony perhaps? They may win the crown by trying to topple the iPod as the MP3 player of choice. Motorola? That would have a satisfying circularity -- after all, they made the original 68K Mac chips. Any ideas out there? Who do you think it will be?
Fast forward a few years, and IBM had become the Mac's new best friend, creating the PowerPC chip that brought Macs into the new millenium. Microsoft took over as the Emperor of Mean, ripping off the Mac OS, dumbing it down, and then selling it as a thing called "Windoze" (in Mac parlance.) Law suits and ill will between the two companies became legendary, but it sort of petered out when Apple and Microsoft made a huge financial pact and pledged to work together. It was a troubled marriage -- Microsoft's next Mac version of their Office Suite was notorious for being insultingly un-Maclike and nearly impossible to use, but an uneasy peace prevailed between the two companies.
That meant a new enemy was required and Intel gladly stepped in. Not long ago, Mac pundits were quipping that the "Intel Inside" sticker was a warning label and Apple ads parodied Intel's "men in bunny" suits campaign by showing them being fried by the superior power of the Mac. The Intel-based world, in hundreds of op-eds, labeled the Mac an expensive vanity machine, while furiously copying Mac's innovations into the next releases of their own hardware. Apple pretended not to notice and married Unix instead -- and that's where it was for a while.
Today, Apple announced that by the end of 2007, all Macintosh computers will be running on Intel chips.
As they say, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Today's announcement leaves the "company to hate" position open. I've no doubt it will be filled, but by whom? There's always Microsoft, but that would be so "last century." -- Sony perhaps? They may win the crown by trying to topple the iPod as the MP3 player of choice. Motorola? That would have a satisfying circularity -- after all, they made the original 68K Mac chips. Any ideas out there? Who do you think it will be?
posted by dps | 4:45 AM
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