Not long ago things were simple. Apple ruled it’s world with OS X and PCs ruled their world with Windows and Linux. Back and forth the battles raged on and on trying to prove how much more secure, reliable, faster, etc. each system was. Oh, those WERE the days. But everything has changed now.

Welcome to a new era Internet browsing, e-mail and document writing laymen. Things are no longer so simple. Apples and oranges? Oh no. It’s all the same now. Intel has brought the world together. Dell, IBM, Sony, Apple… They’re all doing it. The Core Duo shuffle.

apple logoApple has released a new ad campaign aimed at the PC. Hi, I’m an Apple chimes in the casually dressed young looking man. And I’m a PC replies the older looking business dressed man. The ads get you to believe that they are still different – a PC and a Mac. This would be great, if there was truth to what the commercials are trying to say. They. Are. Not. Not anymore.

If the commercials compared OS X and WinXP I wouldn’t even have thought about writing a blip, tip, or blop on this topic. Ohhh yea, WinXP can run on a Mac now. …Right.
The other day in the news reporters were saying Sony bowed to Apple’s AAC. Read that again… See the little apostrophe and that small s? That implies ownership. Apple did not create AAC. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding and has been an international standard since April 1997. It was developed with contributions by Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia (thank you wikipedia).

Yes, you read that correctly… Sony. Sony was a part of an audio standard that they will now include in the list of file types for their digital media players. This is not bowing to Apple’s success. One smart thing Sony may have realized is people don’t change settings in applications. This is important because iTunes imports CDs into AAC as the default file type.

With this file type readable on their equipment now people can drag and drop tunes with ease.

banging head on wallWhat am I saying? The media, and Apple, are touting that Apple is still different. Sure they make pretty products, their OS is very secure and friendly, and they have a majority of the DMP market none of this makes them different. With the transition to the Intel CPU Apple has moved into the same market as everyone else. Their key to the city is to try to retain this uniqueness. Sorry, but that’s gone the way of the IBM PowerPC chip-set.

Enough is enough.

On a wonderful side note. My PowerBook has been on for 34 days 23 hours and 15 minutes. Apple just released a security update which everything will go back to 0’s in a few minutes. Yowzers.