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On Monday, June 6, at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Steve Jobs revealed that Apple would switch from its IBM-sourced PowerPC chip to Intel's Pentium D processor beginning in the latter half of 2006. Industry analysts began dissecting this move several days before the announcement in a series of "will they/won't they" articles every bit as breathless as those announcing the splits between Ben Affleck and J-Lo or Brad and Jennifer.

June 6 removed all doubts: They will. That doesn't answer the big question of how come?, however. Apple claims that it all comes down to chip delivery, which has been IBM's big problem—in fact, IBM has never produced a G5 PowerPC chip that would be suitable for laptop use. Since IBM will be providing PowerPC chips for Microsoft's all-but-here Xbox 360 console, Sony's eminent PlayStation 3, and the next generation of Nintendo's game-playing machine, it could be argued that Apple's share of the market simply isn't large enough to drive it to produce such a critter.

Many observers, including myself, assumed that it had something to do with digital rights management (DRM), speculation that was fueled in no small part by a report on the British website Digit, which boldly stated that Intel had embedded DRM into the Pentium D and 945 chipsets.

Not so, countered Don Whiteside, vice president of Intel's Corporate Technology Group. Whiteside told Wolfgang Gruener at Tom's Hardware Guide, "We don't have any unique hardware to support DRM," adding that such features are standard in all chipsets these days. In fact, Whiteside criticized SACD as an egregious attempt to restrict copying and computer playback of copyrighted material, characterizing it as "absolutely unacceptable."

Hmmm, deflecting the discussion with weasel words like "unique hardware" and discussions of another company's failed platform doesn't entirely convince me that the switch doesn't center on what Digit's Julian Bajkowski calls "controlling copyright through the motherboard," but we'll have to wait and see. That said, if I can't hone my preferred DRM-centric conspiracy theory, I think I'll borrow that of Robert X. Cringely,, who, in a hilariously splenetic rant, basically chalks the move up to Apple's plans of worldwide domination.

Yeah, Apple's plan for world domination. I told you it was funny.