Certainly Steve's case sounded persuasive, particularly to ears that are more appreciative of long term strategies than short term tactics. Before thinking about any upsides, it is worth noting that the potential downside of staying with IBM had clearly started to look a lot worse than the downside of making the leap. It is legitimate for Apple to claim that earlier inaccurate technical predictions were made in good faith and to pass on some of the responsibility, both good and bad, to their suppliers. But to emphasise that Intel has some advantage in being seen as a component supplier rather than a competitor only months after IBM unloaded its PC decision sets a new mark for spin doctoring.

Undoubtedly the worst of any market hesitancy can be smoothed by insanely great offers on runout PPC boxes. Tracking second hand prices might be more informative as to the wider acceptance of the move. And selling a Mac which has the potential to be instantly repurposed as a Windoze box may have an interesting impact on corporate holdouts. There are some signs that the commodity PC supplier shakeout may be finally heading in the direction of almost every other major consumer products market and squeezing out all but the most specialised of the minor players and thus room for Apple to become at least a clear number three quite quickly, after which who knows?

It's hard to believe it is almost four years since I pondered far below in response to another Jobs keynote What happens if there is no "Next Great Thing"? leading, post S11 2001, to my blunt assertion "There will be no further next big thing from information technology." Apple's latest move only underlines that. Yet I would be wrong to ignore the incremental improvement as the Web enters its adolescence. During the intervening years, I've finally had to face up to some of the less appealing consequences of increasing age, though only directly felt a tiny fraction of what others near and dear have had to deal with. But seeing as my thoughts haven't changed significantly over those years, I can't really blame those thoughts on getting old.