The definition of "PC" used to be set by IBM. Now it's set by Microsoft. It never has been and never will be a creature of Intel. (As evidenced by the fact that many PCs don't have a speck of Intel in them anywhere, since they run AMD processors.) And so slapping an Intel chip in something doesn't make it a PC.

Mac lovers will still continue to buy Apple's massively overpriced hardware in order to get the pleasure of running the best end-user operating system ever designed. I suspect very few will really care who makes the CPU, once the change stops being news.

(And no, BTW…"PowerBook" is not named after the chip. Mac laptops were called "PowerBooks" long before the PowerPC chips. The very first laptop I actually used for an extended period was a 68000-based PowerBook that I rented in order to stay online while I was in the hospital after surgery. IIRC I was 14 at the time. But I know it was a PowerBook 100.)

The ability to (perhaps) use Windows software (such as Google Earth) on a Mac is a huge plus.

In my mind, Motorola's production of the motherboard processor, wasn't harmed a bit by Apple's early collaboration with IBM. In fact, the modern Mac has much to owe to this partnership, specifically, the entire idea of the PowerPC (which was originally intended to cross between the Mac and PC worlds).

Apple's recent collaboration with Intel doesn't really give me pause. When I fight with my brothers over who's machine is better (me on the Mac side, they on the WinTel side), we rarely fight about the processor. Rather, the superiority battle always seems to be about which machine is better suited to the business user.

The introduction of the Intel chip doesn't immediately pose a threat to the Mac way of life (or business).

I'm more concerned that the lovable Apple icon on the start up screen will turn into a Princess Castle, with Tinkerbell flying gleefully overhead…

Grant – re: Postal Service – certainly the agency is to blame, but I don't think Apple, as a client, can completely dodge the bullet. When you hire the agency, issue the brief, and approve the creative, you have to accept at least some of the blame. Let's pretend, though, that Apple was genuinely unaware of what was happening. (which, actually, is a good possibility — with the super-secret nature of all of the MacWorld events, apparently few people saw the final ad prior to showing… in the past, I have heard that Steve is actually making final decisions on ads only days before MacWorld) Apple took some heat over the Eminem/Lugz commercial, but I think people generally gave them the benefit of the doubt. Twice, though, and it is a little harder to look past.

There is one other interesting things about this spot: it's the first Apple desktop commercial that isn't signed "Apple" but "Mac," much in the same way the iPod ads are done.

It seems that Apple wants to push the "Mac-ness" of their computers over the particular chip or hardware platform it's running. The new Intel laptop is not a PowerBook – a word so culturally ingrained that it is almost generic – but a "MacBook". In Apple's newly restated worldview, it isn't the chip that makes a computer a dull PC or an "exciting" Mac; it's the operating system.