Commodity Wintel box makers don't have any interest in such stuff.

You've completely lost your bloody mind, mate. You can't possibly seriously believe that Apple is the first multi-thread thinker in the world. Do you? I really think you Apple guys truly believe you are the first ones there.

Most of it goes beyond our technical competency;

As Wayne says, "Shyeah".

Well, anyway -- welcome to the Intel processor bandwagon, kiddies. There's nothing quite like the newly evangelical. "16 cores. 32 cores." Heh, heh.

No, I don't think that. But I have heard various times that the big PC makers are not interested in pushing personal computing in new directions.

In fact, on a humbler plane I seem to recall a certain non-interest by PC makers in USB, until Apple made the plunge...and lots of reluctance even after that. And it was Apple who first eliminated floppy-drives in all its models.

It's not that Apple is the only one interested in multi-threading. It's that they are the only large, leading manufacturer interested in continual revolutonary change. It fits their business model, and it does not fit Dell's.

But I have heard various times that the big PC makers are not interested in pushing personal computing in new directions.

You heard wrong, believe me. I interact with these guys almost daily.

I know you think I'm just Apple-bashing, but I'm not. I was running a multi-threaded processor on a commonly-available, non-expert laptop three years ago. PC and server guys have been having these discussions for years (Tom's Hardware, frex), and you Apple dudes were busy telling us about how wonderful the PowerPC was and there was no bloody need for multi-threaded dual-core processors on a laptop or desktop and we were all just a bunch of powerhungry gigahertz geeks. Now it's all the rage and "wild stuff."

This statement is 180 degrees from what the Apple camps said before the Intel announcement:
Intel needs exciting new developments in computing, to give people a reason to buy the most expensive new chips.
Yep, we were all running 386DX processors before Apple blessed Intel with an order. C'mon, John. Be serious. The gigahertz race has been running for a long time without the benefit of Apple's blessing. And us pee-cee guys were the object of ridicule for being on the upgrade treadmill. Well, welcome to the bandwagon.

And to top it all off, we now get to hear how Apple invented the dual-boot computing machine. Something those 'commodity Wintel box makers' have done for literally years, even though their customers couldn't possibly have any interest in such things. Good grief.

Scott, what you say is true but you don't address my point. Nobody said Apple invented dual-booting, or discovered multi-threading. Most of the cool inventions do not come from Apple, and I'm sure there are gazillions of PC guys who would like to push the envelope.

But the large manufacturers don't have any incentive to force radical change. Increasing gigaherz is not a radical change, it's an incremental one. Cool, but still about doing the same things faster.

Michael Dell does not get up every year or two like Steve Jobs and say, in effect, "Everything I told you last year is stupid and boring--just forget I said it and look at this!"

You can laugh at him--feel free, some of his stuff is hype and BS--but that's the kind of "creative destruction" that drives change.

I remember the shock when we heard that all Macs would now be USB and there would be no more floppy drives. People were not happy. Change was forced on them. No big PC maker acts like that. (That's not a criticism; it wouldn't fit their business model). Same with giving all Macs Ethernet, or having them all able to edit video out-of-the-box. It changes what people think of as "normal" for PC's, and drags others along.

Other people invent things like multi-threading, but it is Apple that is likely to now popularize some awesome (and useless and possibly invented by a pc guy) graphic effect that makes people go home and look at last year's Mac and say blehhh! And which thereby changes what people perceive as the norm for PC's, so that others have to follow.

But the large manufacturers don't have any incentive to force radical change.

You make my point for me...there's nothing radical going on here. Unless you're a Mac guy. Then, to you and others, it's radical. And worse, you're talking about the same things ("(Yonah, Merom and Napa-Merom) and Codename 'Conroe' architectures") that you used to claim was just so much pc geekery. I used the gigahertz race as an example simply because that's what you're talking about today. USB? Me and tens of thousands of others were on that curve well ahead of Apple, because with the dreary Wintels, I didn't have a hardware lockin.

No big PC maker acts like that.]

Baloney. Where's the Tablet Mac? The Pocket Mac? The Smartphone Mac? When they get here, if they get here, it'll be Thanksgiving+Christmas+4th of July all over again, I'm sure. I'll be here to remind you that I bought one off-the-shelf at CompUSA, where all the geniusii hang out, in 2003.