So when Steve Jobs was asked once about whether Apple was committed to the PowerPC some years back, he replied yes, but added Apple always wanted options. Well, it’s certainly clear, in retrospect, what he was actually talking about.

At the time he made that pronouncement, Apple was evidently negotiating with Intel to move to that processor platform, while, at the same time, developing a version of Mac OS X to support the new chips.

As seamless as the transition might have seemed from a hardware standpoint, except for some teething pains with the first Intel-based Mac notebooks, a tremendous amount of work had to be done to make it happen. Indeed, it took a while for software companies to get with the program, even as Jobs tried to show us how you could build a Universal app — native to both the PowerPC and Intel — by just clicking a check box in the Xcode development environment.

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Up until this week, if you attempted to jailbreak your iPhone — which means unlocking it and making it possible to use apps from sources other than the App Store — you might be regarded as a rogue, maybe even a lawbreaker. You might wonder if Apple might actually show up at your door and seize your iPhone.

Of course, in the real world, Apple has continued to tolerate the practice, while warning customers that if you accidentally brick your phone — make it unusable — they aren’t responsible for the consequences. The risk is all yours.

However, a new modification of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act essentially makes the practice legal, at least insofar as you possibly suffering any unsavory consequences. That is, aside from risking the voiding of your iPhone’s product warranty because of the possible misuse of the product.

What makes matters doubly confusing is that this revision will be in effect for just three years, meaning that future copyright officials might opt to let it expire, or devise something totally different.

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Now that the notorious Antennagate scandal has apparently died down, the tech media can return to talking about Apple’s “other” product lineup — the Mac. Yes, there’s finally news that disproves the unfounded rumor that Macs are playing second fiddle these days, which is why they allegedly don’t receive regular upgrades.

After ongoing rumors of reduced availability of the iMac and Mac Pro, Apple finally met expectations and revised both Tuesday. Although the basic form factors remain essentially identical to the previous versions, there’s more horsepower under the hood and, typical for Apple, the prices are essentially unchanged.

The key here is that, despite claims that Apple is ignoring the latest chips from Intel, it does appear that they are embracing many of them for these speed bumps. The aging Core 2 Duo is gone from the low-end iMacs at long last, replaced by Intel’s Core i3, accompanied by discrete graphics from ATI. That decision is a response to the fact that Apple cannot use NVIDIA’S powerful integrated graphics with Intel’s current processors due to an ongoing contract dispute.

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According to the conventional wisdom, Apple is selling more and more Macs every quarter, but remains far behind on the global market, with just a slim single digit market share.  The real issue, however, is whether the well-known surveys are seriously understating Apple’s success.

You see, in addition to selling 3.47 million Macs this past quarter, Apple also moved 3.27 iPads. So how do you define an iPad anyway?

To some, the iPad is just a swollen iPod touch, a handheld personal information gadget that’s best used for book reading and Web surfing. On the other hand, just where is the line of demarcation between a tablet, typified by the iPad, and a personal computer, such as a Mac?

You can use both to browse the Internet and handle your email. The presence of Apple’s Keynote and Pages means that you can also create content on an iPad, and I haven’t begun to cover the thousands of other content creation apps available from third parties. That’s still a burgeoning market, although the Mac is still way ahead.

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