Yes! I've read a lot of comments that talk about how Apple is a hardware company over and over again. Well, they may be today, but IMHO this is the begin of a concious move to make Apple an IP/Software/Digital Media company.

IBM ditched the PC business, because it's not strategic. They are right. PCs are commodities now, not where the future lies. I'll bet anything that you'll see IBM ditch their bigger machines eventually too, as they slowly move everything to commodity hardware.

Apple's future is in controlling the desktop. Store all your media with Apple software. Buy all your media from Apple software. Apple will consume Tivo, will sell movies and video programming, will convert iTunes to a truly profitable module iPod nonwithstanding.

Within five years, we'll all be talking about Apple like we do Microsoft - the company that is trying to control what you do on a computer, what you watch, how you watch it, how you buy it, what you listen to, how you buy it, how you encode your life and share it with your friends. Apple hardware will be vapor.

The move to intel is a move to commodity hardware. At first, they will lock you out. Once they get more hooks in people, they will jettison the hardware business. Going Intel makes this more possible - it opens the door to outsourcing their hardware, which is the first step to bailing on it totally.

That, or all this will backfire and they'll implode.