DATELINE–Boston, Mass.

It was on the 52nd anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima which claimed the lives of 70,000 that Steve Jobs, the spiritual leader of Apple Computers, announced Microsoft had won its 13 year long campaign against the Macintosh.

Speaking to a gathering of industry luminaries and Macintosh faithful at the influential Macworld Conference, the prodigal son announced he was selling the family farm for a handful of magic beans and a pocketful of empty promises. The Hogan’s Heroes of the high tech world had finally struck a deal with their not-so-hapless captors.

Before a booing crowd and skeptical media representatives, the balding and bespectacled Jobs announced Apple’s unconditional surrender to Microsoft’s unyielding expansion into the occupied territories of the electronic frontier.

Behind Jobs, projected on a giant video screen, the smirking visage of Bill “Der Kommisar” Gates lorded over the festivities via satellite.

The scene was eerily reminiscent of a stage set almost 13 years ago when the charismatic Jobs personally proclaimed the beginning of a Macintosh revolution against the monopolistic behemoth IBM. Way back when, in 1984, Apple was literally depicted as an athletic and female David who, throwing hammer in hand, could shatter the looming Orwellian telepresence of IBM.

Today, the Goliath is clearly Microsoft but a high-tech David is nowhere to be found.

Could Apple’s surrender be anything more than a signal to Microsoft’s global partners that the age of self-determination and democratic individualism has finally come to an end? Does a single, uncontested Operating System differ significantly from a Fourth Reich?

The mainstream media stutters to describe with any degree of accuracy or perspective the fundamental shift that took place yesterday at the Macworld Expo. Meanwhile, MS-Apple plans to introduce co-authored software to Mac users as early as next year. In contrast, Vichy France started to speak German after only a few days of occupation.

Preparations for the dismantling of participatory democracy will not be televised. Even the fabled CNN will only report the catastrophe only as it unfolds – sui generis. Likewise, we can expect to be inundated with good news in a few years, as the media finally discovers that Microsoft, the triumphant Philistine, now benevolently controls the world’s access to information.