You want to know the real reason why Apple only has 5% of the computer market, while Intel and Microsoft have their claws in the rest? One word: innovation. Yup, it's the fact that Intel and Microsoft keep cranking out new and innovative products while Apple keeps playing catch-up. Really, how is the Mac ever going to win any serious market share while Apple just sits there stagnating even as Intel and Microsoft are hard at work on stunning new breakthroughs like a "software-based access point" for 802.11 wireless networks?

Naw, we're just yankin' your chain. But the bit about the Wintel wireless access point is 100% true; faithful viewer Matthew Smith turned us on to an EE Times article about how Intel is "designing a technique for turning PCs into low-cost access points for 802.11 wireless networks," which could "reduce the price of a consumer access point from $250 to about $100." The idea is apparently to stick a wireless networking card into a PC and then run software that makes the computer act just like one of those wireless routers that are all the rage among the kiddies these days. Microsoft's getting in on the act by 1) coming up with the clever name "Soft Wi-Fi" (which, we are assured, is neither a quiescently frozen dessert nor a new addition to the Teletubbies cast) and 2) planning to "detail its own take on the initiative" at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference next week. This is clearly some cutting-edge stuff, people.

Now, apparently we're missing something pretty major, here, because we had to check the article's date stamp about eight times to verify that it was indeed published yesterday and not three years ago. Correct us if we're wrong, but doesn't everything that Intel and Microsoft are trying to do here sound exactly like Apple's Software Base Station for AirPort? If you had a second AirPort-capable Mac and didn't want to buy a $299 AirPort Base Station, you could buy a second $99 AirPort card and run Apple's software to make that Mac an 802.11 access point so it could wirelessly share its Internet connection or access to anything on its wired network. (Well, as long as you were running Mac OS 9-- it's still not officially available for Mac OS X, though there are workarounds.)

However, if you're at all shocked or appalled that the words "Apple" and "AirPort" aren't mentioned even once in the article (perhaps in the context of "Apple managed to pull this off with AirPort over two years ago, so we're not sure why Intel's version is still 'early work' that's 'not ready for prime time' and why the company's mighty engineers still 'don't have anything [they] plan to release soon'"), then you're obviously new to this whole "tech press" thing. But don't worry, you'll eventually get used to it. Heck, we all did.