CNet is reporting that Apple will announce on Monday that it's ditching IBM's PowerPC in favor of Intel's Pentium. Wow! This has been rumored for quite a while, but it's one of those rare rumors that people didn't believe.

I've been very tempted to buy a Mac for the past few years, but so far I haven't been able to justify a transition that locks me into a hardware platform with a small share of the market. Especially a platform that is totally foreign to the "big company IT" arena that pays my bills.

With this announcement Apple has virtually assured themselves of getting some of my business. Many things are lining up well for Apple in my household.

• I'm already in the iTunes camp and I'm looking forward to getting my first iPod.
• My favorite Microsoft and Adobe products are available on the Mac.
• My wife has been interested in Macs for some time now. We recently took a trip to the Apple Store that opened up in the "new" St. Johns Town Center 10 minutes from my house.
• My daughter spent the entire time during our first trip to the Apple Store playing a kid's game on an iMac - we had to tear her away from it.
• I recently purchased the Griffin iMic and LapelMic products. These are more well known in the Apple world, but are working great with my Windows XP laptop. If this is the kind of product I can expect in the Mac world... well, let's call it another big plus. Griffin will be a key part of my podcasting platform real soon now...
• My mother is itching for a new Mac. She's coming into town for my daughter's recital today and we'll be making a quick stop at the Apple Store to let her browse around.
• Apple finally released Java 5 for the Mac. It took long enough, but they're finally there.
• Tiger is impressive! From a user's perspective it's really tempting... given my development background, I'm less tempted, but that could change.

That's a significant list of reasons to by a Mac (even as a secondary machine) and I'm sure the list will continue to grow. The Intel announcement could have a big impact on Apple if they play it right.

They should make it possible for me to load Mac OS X on a standard desktop PC, even if they require a relatively beefy machine. This opens up the real possibility of Apple taking on Microsoft for a significant chunk of the desktop PC market. Who would have thought this possible even a few months ago? The people that believed the Apple/Intel rumor, that's who.