I have to think that the PowerPC never really attained its true potential, but that’s not Apple’s fault. First Motorola and then IBM failed to deliver the speedier chips Apple needed to keep up with the rapidly-advancing X86 platform. Both AMD and Intel kept moving ahead, whereas Apple’s chip partners languished and failed to deliver the right chips at the right time.

Take the original announcement of the G5. Steve Jobs introduced an on-screen presentation featuring IBM’s state-of-the-art processor fabrication plant, and how they had developed technology that would blow the competitors from Intel away. He even had the temerity to promise that, a year hence, there would be a 3GHz version. Outstanding!

But the G5 had some serious deficiencies, most notable of which is that they ran real hot. So the most powerful Power Mac G5 required multiple fans and liquid cooling to keep the box at a safe operating temperature. Some folks actually suffered coolant leaks, which meant that their Mac towers were “toast,” as far as repairs were concerned.

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You’ve heard it time and time again. Apple won’t enter the low-cost PC market because they don’t want to produce “junk.” Steve Jobs said that himself as recently as the last phone conference with financial analysts in October, when asked whether Apple planned to release a netbook.

Since then things have changed in the marketplace, and these new facts can’t be lost on Apple.

One of the few success stories in the consumer electronics world just happens to be the netbook, which is showing a roughly 160% sales improvement. Where the cheap notebook was once consigned to emerging countries, the current shaky economic climate has forced both consumers and businesses to embrace cheap gear.

This means, for example, that discounters, such as Wal-Mart, are doing very well, whereas the higher-priced retailers are suffering.

There are reports that Apple, which has traditionally played in the mid- to high-priced PC marketplace, has been forced to cut back on production because of reduced demand. Of course, until Apple actually reveals its financials for the current quarter — and that’s about a month away — the truth won’t be known.

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Those of us who embraced the Mac as the ideal personal computer solution early on might have been thought of as elitists at one time. That’s because we all paid substantially extra for the privilege, and that’s where the concept of the “Apple Tax” began.

More to the point, for so many years, the Mac user existed in a tiny niche where artists and other content creators resided. If you wanted software, local stores would rarely be able to accommodate you. If they had any Mac products for you at all, they largely consisted of a few dusty boxes consigned to a rear, seldom-visited shelf. So you ordered mail order catalogs to find the titles you wanted. That was, of course, before the Internet and convenient online ordering spread to the masses.

Certainly the success of Microsoft’s Windows 95 made it awfully hard for some to remain faithful to the poor, beleaguered Mac platform. This isn’t to say that Apple didn’t do its share to make you feel abandoned. Sure there were regular model updates; in fact, so many sometimes that you didn’t know the differences.

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Since I posted my observations about that boring vignette that passes for a Microsoft commercial, featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, some of you have responded with your own comments. Most, I think, agreed with me that it was a yawner that seriously failed to deliver on its promise, which was to get you to adopt Windows Vista. Or at least that’s what I suppose it was there to do.

Others remarked that Microsoft simply wanted to increase the Windows comfort zone, comparing it to an old shoe that you’re used to and aren’t apt to replace, except, perhaps, with a newer shoe from the same maker.

Well, I suppose there’s some inherent wisdom in that approach, but I think it mainly signifies the mindset of Microsoft’s executives. You see, I have come to believe that, if someone succeeded in inventing a time machine, Steve Ballmer and the rest of his crew would want to travel back to the mid-1990s, when the world’s largest software company could truly claim ownership of the phrase “king of the world.”

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