Predictably enough, Charles Schwab's not the only organization bagging on Apple these days; apparently Giga Information Group Inc. is putting the boot in, too. Whereas Schwab is a "financial services firm" whose job is apparently to tell everyone to sell off their Apple stock before the company spontaneously bursts into flames, Giga is a "global technology advisory firm" whose mission seems to be to predict Apple's imminent demise year after year after year. (See? If you look hard enough, there's gainful employment for everyone out there, no matter how lame! Truly, it gives one hope.)

In its new report on IT trends for 2003, Giga's ever-lovin' Rob Enderle dishes his latest gloombites on Apple and insists that the company is "being driven out of every segment but consumer." Why, you ask? Because companies are "driving out non-standard hardware" (well, okay, nothing new there) and, he claims, prefer Linux to UNIX on the desktop. Enderle also cites a "lack of management tools"-- gee, it's a pity there's no such thing as Apple Remote Desktop, Workgroup Manager, or a centrally-managed NetBoot technology-- and a "pull back of key vendors like Quark" (hmmm, someone should tell Quark that) as reasons why he expects Apple's market share to drop below two percent next year. (Meanwhile, if you'll allow us a petty grammar flame, apparently on Rob's home planet "obsolesce" is a transitive verb. Go figure.)

But his goofiest assertion of all is that Apple's "continued technical disadvantage" against Intel will force the company to switch from PowerPC chips to x86 processors before 2003 is finished. Suddenly we've veered from Clueless Heights across the town line into Crazyville. While such a switch is always frolicsome fodder for the rumor sites and we've little doubt that Apple is staying prepared just in case Motorola and IBM both fall through the earth's crust and get eaten by the Mole People, to think that Apple would choose to switch processor platforms and require all current software to be rewritten/recompiled to run on new iron (or limp along in emulation) in any situation short of a massive C.H.U.D. incident is just plain nuts.

Our theory? Either Enderle's drinking cheap aftershave when nobody's looking, or he owns stock in a company whose business plan involves collecting license fees on the use of the word "beleaguered." We're not going to bother speculating on which is more likely.