The news on Mac OS being developed in parallel to run on Intel in addition to the PowerPC processor stunned me. I can’t even be ashamed for not foretelling that despite the rumors, because a completely different processor architecture supported for 5 years just ‘in case’? That just doesn’t make sense! Apple is fairly small and 5 years ago had enough work just with keeping it alive and persuading people to jump on its new OS for which there was very little support and close to no applications. Hardly a situation to run a parallel development of this untested OS for Intel ‘just in case’!

I guess I’m a bit disappointed, too, to hear the famed RISC processor to go from Apple, from Macs. Intel is just ubiquitous, no frills processor. But it works and works for less money than IBM’s G5, I guess. Consumerism may be part of the death pill that PowerPC received. Afterall look at the 3G iPod transformed into an uglier 4G with no transparent red underlit touch buttons. It went from a specialty product, from an ultra cool, if not the coolest at the time, gadget, to an ordinary consumer product that serves the purpose.

Nevertheless, events are a stroke of a genius from the strategic market point of view. Steve Jobs just never stops surprising us…