Apple's shipment numbers do not represent a clear picture of the company's opportunity.

Linux is at the starting gate. Shipment numbers look good, but on the revenue side you see a clearer picture of its enterprise value.

It is clear that organizations are looking at ways to cut costs and make sure their investments offer immediate value. Virtualization helps them achieve those goals by aggregating the workloads handled by older machines on a bigger machine.

What's new is that someone built a whole operating system, not tools or subsystems.

Apple knows that even with this Intel chip switch, it's not going to go around talking about chips and what's inside the box. The company builds on the differentiation it's already found from its software, which combines with the design of the machine.

IBM is trying to ride this horse along with all the other horses it's riding and not fall off any of them. This is a great circus act.