Speaking of Intel, can anyone tell us what specific pod-based alien life form is taking over the minds of that company's higher-ups? We can accept the downplaying of clock speed as a performance indicator in light of the shipping of Intel's new 64-bit "Oops, It Only Runs At 800 MHz" Itanium processor, but the public endorsement of two technologies chosen as standards by Apple has us wondering if the whole company recently packed up and moved to Stepford or something. Clearly this is not normal Intel behavior, and we're just wondering how long we have before the full-scale invasion begins.

Check it out; we were cruising MacMinute for info-bites when we found a link to an ATI press release in which the company announces a new graphics card. No big whoop, right? Except this particular card includes a FireWire port. Still not intrigued? Well, then consider the headline: "ATI and Intel Support IEEE 1394 [that's FireWire to us Mac folks] as Multimedia Connection Standard for PC Products." There's even a quote from an Intel flunky about how great FireWire is: "Intel has long been a proponent of IEEE 1394 as the way to bridge consumer PCs to the emerging class of digital consumer electronics devices." Gee, that's funny, because we could have sworn that Intel originally considered the Apple-invented FireWire architecture to be the work of Satan, and was pushing for the industry to embrace its own USB 2.0 instead.

But that's not all. Remember how Intel was fighting the 802.11 wireless networking standard that Apple popularized via AirPort by supporting alternative wireless architectures like HomeRF and Bluetooth? Well, according to a CNET article, Intel has pretty much abandoned HomeRF, since the company just announced new consumer-grade wireless networking products that are 802.11 all the way. And as for Bluetooth, well, another CNET story notes that an Intel executive has gone on the record as stating that "802.11 has won" and that "Bluetooth is in full retreat from Moscow at the moment." Clunky historical reference aside (and the fact that we've always assumed that Bluetooth was intended for short-range, focused wireless connections for stuff like cell phones and PDAs, not as an 802.11 competitor), to see Intel publicly admitting defeat and throwing its support behind technologies it once opposed is disconcerting, to say the least.

So kudos to Steve Jobs; we're not sure whether his plan involved the aforementioned alien pods or if he is just soaking Intel's headquarters with near-lethal doses of satellite-boosted Reality Distortion Field energy, but whatever he's doing, it appears to be working. Now we're just waiting for Intel's CEO to come out and say, "Man, we really should have bagged this whole x86 thing years ago. You know what's a totally good chip architecture? PowerPC. Now that's a processor you can really sink your teeth into."