Just like with the whole Sony Connect thing, we'd rather hoped to avoid incorporating the latest dustup involving analyst Rob Enderle into our plotline, in part because we're a little uncomfortable playing the role of "third wheel." See, our whole Enderlinian dynamic has been upended; normally he says or writes something unaccountably inane, and then we make snarky little comments about the man's IQ falling off the left edge of the bell curve and his predilection for low-grade crack. This time, though, Rob's managed to get himself into an all-out debate sorta situation with Bryan Chaffin from The Mac Observer. And since Bryan (not being three years old and feeble-minded) is doing a fine job of pointing out all the times when Rob wanders off the path of reality, our habitual oh-so-obvious observations about Mr. Enderle's evident state of Advanced Brain Meltedness™ would be even more superfluous than usual.

But then the guy just keeps going on and on about how Apple needs to switch to Intel processors or die a horrible twisted death. And really, no matter how terrific a job Bryan's doing, how can we possibly just ignore that kind of thing? (Especially since he originally predicted that Apple would be out of business if it hadn't switched by, oh, let's see, here... five months ago.)

So yeah, folks, in case you haven't seen it, faithful viewer N Gray points out that the debate is raging over at MacNewsWorld, and two Rob-vs.-Bryan installments have since been posted. If you want your fix of the usual Enderlicious inaccuracies and drug-addled non sequiturs, look no further. Rob manages to misidentify which processor platform Steve Jobs chose for his post-Apple NeXT hardware; no, it wasn't x86, Robbie-Boy, it was the same 68K platform Apple was using in Macs. He also states that a Popular Mechanics article claimed that Apple cheated on its G5 benchmarks and the G5 "got trounced," showing "no performance advantage with the PowerPC today"; if you actually read the article you'll find that it makes no such conclusions about cheating, and even mentions that the testers were "surprised" when "the G5 was 59.5 percent faster," "67 percent faster," and "89.5 percent faster" than their dual 3.2 GHz x86 test system at cross-platform gene-sequencing and image-processing tasks. Rob, Rob, Rob... Stoned again, and in public, no less. Tsk, tsk.

Don't even get us started on Rob's claim that Apple has little control over its own operating system because "FreeBSD provides the kernel, the heart, of the Mac OS today." Because if we have to explain that Mac OS X uses its own variant of the Mach kernel that was originally created by-- guess who?-- Avie Tevanian, Apple's Chief Software Technology Officer, who threw it together way back when he was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon and that FreeBSD has nothing to do with it, we'll have to do something drastic and painful to the next vaguely Enderlic-lookin', suit-wearin', moustache-sportin' white guy we see. And we're too pretty for jail.

Actually, you know what? We're really just going to have to stop there, because there's this neck vein that's started throbbing, and we really don't want to pull a Lou Ferrigno, wreck a bunch of stuff, and wind up having to hitch a ride out of town while someone plays that sad, sad walking-away music. So go infuriate yourself with Rob's goofy nonsense on your own time, and console yourself with the fact that there are folks like Bryan to set the facts straight. As for us, well... Rage... taking over...