I know PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak likes to be controversial, likes to think outside the box – heck, even outside the universe that contains the concept of “boxes” – but his latest column on Apple is a new low (or high, depending on your perspective). I think the editors at PCMag just run his stuff as a kind of gag now. I picture them giggling to themselves, like university students printing some wild-ass piece of gonzo writing in their student paper and hoping the administration doesn’t notice.
Dvorak’s latest brain-wave is that Apple is plotting behind the scenes to dump the Mac OS and run Windows. Makes sense, right? After all, says the columnist, they have moved away from Firewire and are supporting USB now (cue the ominous soundtrack – maybe something from The Exorcist), and the Apple Switch campaign is over and “nobody switched,” he says. That might come as a surprise to some of the hundreds of thousands of people who bought new Macs in the past few quarters, since sales have been rising at a much faster rate than they were before the iPod.
But the biggest weapon in Dvorak’s arsenal is, of course, the switch to using Intel chips. And what kind of chips do PCs that run Windows use? (nudge, nudge) Why Intel, of course (knowing wink). Could it get any more obvious? It certainly could for me. Why on earth would Apple want to run Windows? It wouldn’t make any kind of operating sense whatsoever, since Apple would be giving up the last thing that makes the company unique – apart from some cool hardware. Not only would it piss off the legions of Macolytes who worship Steve Jobs and everything he touches, but it probably wouldn’t win over that many Windows users either.
Not to mention, of course, that Steve Jobs would have to be lobotomized before he would allow something like that to happen, and the odds of that seem slim. Still, I suppose to be fair to Dvorak, the chances aren’t zero. So watch out – if you see Steve Jobs wandering around with a big scar across his forehead where they popped his head open and removed his cerebellum, then the PCMag columnist just might be onto something.
For more on John Dvorak’s growing reality problems, check out Download Squad and MacSlash Phil Sim, the Squashmeister, also has some thoughts – and as usual he takes a refreshingly different tack (although I still think he’s wrong). Not surprisingly, the Unofficial Apple Weblog also has an opinion on Dvorak, and they’ve gone for the “off his meds” angle too. And for the ultimate does of “John Dvorak is nuts,” you will have to go to the obvious URL: dvorakisnuts.org – where you will find a link to this comic strip version of the above incident.