Apple's Move to Intel

Apple is now going to be transitioning to an x86 architecture. Yes that's the same architecture as windows and upon discovering this I was delighted because this would mean that Apple would be directly competing against Microsoft on a level playing field. This would be great because I could have a Mac experience of my very own for only £74.99.

Unfortunately Apple sees themselves as a hardware company and that means your computer will only run Tiger, if your computer has an Apple Macintosh branded logo on the side.
These systems will of course be able to run Windows, but an unbranded computer will not be able to run Macintosh software.

Apple has lost market share everytime they have moved platform. This time they will be able to keepup with the price point of a Windows computer because they will be using the same hardware, but that is the only advantage I can see from this decision. And that makes me think that they have made a mistake because they haven't increased the accessibility of the Macintosh platform beyond their traditional marketing strategy. The hardware is still a closed platform and that is still a limiting factor for growth. Microsoft on the other hand can now sell their Windows platform to the previously untouchable Macintosh user. This means that Apple has just given Microsoft a new market to exploit, and opportunity to grow.