I know why Apple has made the move to Intel. I know that the company had little choice, given that only Intel makes the range of processors it needs to move forward. Apple was really between a rock and a hard place. However, I wonder how Apple is going to pull this move off without further decimating its already minuscule share of the personal computing market.

For a start, who in their right mind would buy a current model Macintosh knowing that 12 months from now their machines will be obsolete? Sure, their software may be able to run on the new Intel machines – or so Apple tells us. However, it's a fairly sure bet that new Apple apps written for the Intel platform will not be backwardly compatible. I don't know about you but I really don't know anyone who would be prepared to spend a lazy two or three grand on a box that will become almost valueless within 12 months. From personal experience, it was pretty hard to sell a six-month old iMac with a 15 inch LCD monitor, once the model with the 17 inch monitor became standard.

Apple sold about 3.5 million computers in 2004 and had a 2% share of the PC market, according to IDC figures. It will be fascinating exercise to see what strategy Apple employs in order to sell more than a few dozen computers and stop its market share from dropping to zero over the next 12 months.

When Apple finally does release its new range of Intel boxes, after a year in which its market share hits rock bottom, what tricks will it have up its sleeve to entice buyers to once again sample its products? It is true that Steve Jobs and company have come up with some marketing strokes of genius. It is also true that they have presided over some the biggest flops in the annals of IT history. Does anyone remember the Apple Lisa (named after Jobs' daughter if I remember rightly) and, of course no-one needs to be reminded about the Apple Newton, or for that matter Jobs' famously unsuccessful post-Apple effort, the Next computer.

As far as the Apple development community is concerned, it is an open question whether the move to Intel will alienate a significant portion who couldn't be bothered learning how to develop for the new platform. The move may in fact inspire some to widen their horizons and start developing for all those other Intel boxes not running Apple's brand of Unix. In fact, when Apple does release its first Intel boxes, it's questionable whether differentiating itself by being the most proprietary computer on the block will work anymore.

The days of Macs having a major point of difference by being dramatically more user friendly than Windows PCs are ancient history. These days, people want their computers to be more than computers. They want them to be entertainment hubs, media centres, web browsers, TVs, radios, voice and data communications devices. They can already get all of that and more very cheaply on the Intel platform running Windows or even Linux and they couldn't give a damn about the underlying operating system, as long as it works.

If Apple expects to compete successfully on the Intel stage as proprietary product, it will have to come up with something radically different – not just a pretty pastel coloured ornamental version of the same.