A week ago I read the rumors that Apple might be considering a move to Intel, and all the naysayers saying, “It’ll never happen”, “Can’t happen” or “No way”. I wrote a small article or two, and responded in a few forums that said, “careful guys, never say never”, then I laid out a few cases for why it could be real; business, technology, emotion, history, and so on. This is not a “Nya, Nya – I told you so” sorta article — because I never said it would happen, I just said it could. Frankly, I didn’t know, and most of those that said they did know are liars or fools. I just speculated on all the ways that Apple could do it and why they might. Apple still surprised me in how, or in actually doing it.

So there I am, at WWDC, waiting for the Keynote, and I go over and chat with one of the smartest most insightful people I know; Bill Chin. He runs a WebObjects / Web Development consulting firm in Virginia, called M Dimension. As usual, I walked up to him and called him “Eric” by mistake. (Sigh). I had a friend in High School named Eric Minami, who was the smartest kid in the school, and he reminds a lot of Bill — and so I often slip, and call Bill by the wrong name, and feel like an idiot. He gracious ignored my “faux pas”, and we had an hour or two to kill before the keynote, and we sat down and chatted. I laid out all the reasons why Apple going to Intel could be a possibility, and he intelligently and reasonably shot them down in diplomatic flames. By the time we walked in for the presentation, I had far more doubts. I kept expecting Steve to say, “Gotcha” in the presentation, but he didn’t. When the slide came up that said “Transitions” you could have heard a flee sneeze; but in that nanosecond, I realized this was really happening, and the computing universe just got whacked hard enough to dent it.

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