Switching to being a software manufacturer would possibly been the best move for Apple. But they got bitten by the control bug when the original Power PC appeared. Remember that one? Apple was supposed to open its architecture to everybody. And then decided that only they can produce/authorise the hardware for Macs. And fell behind. And will continue to be behind because they still insist on absolute control. That's why you paid $3000 for your dual G5. If I bought something comparable on Windows side, I would have paid $2100, judging the rest of the components by what I paid for my new computer. That would be 2 Opterons 2.2 GHz, dual motherboard, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard, Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT, DVD-ROM and recorder, a good case and a good power supply. And it would be a monster. No, there won't be a huge flood of viruses for Mac. OS X's a niche OS. Good, but niche. Processor has nothing to do with it. And I don't think that people will switch to Macs when Vista appears. If nothing else, Microsoft has better spin doctors than Steve Jobs. :-)

-- erlik