The selection committee, it is apparent, has a flair for the dramatic. They knew that an Apple versus Microsoft tilt would be great television. Heck, if I weren't part of it, I'd tune in. Let's dispense with the elephant in the room: If we are at Round 3 in the Apple/Microsoft tilt, you would have to be hopelessly partisan not to recognize that Microsoft absolutely slaughtered Apple in the first, with Apple making excellent tactical maneuvers in the second so that the biggest question is no longer whether Microsoft will destroy it. The difference between the second round and the first was that Apple chose to quit punching itself. Apple is the prospector, the trailblazer, and yes, perhaps even a Rule Breaker. Microsoft is the Borg. Apple's technology tends to work extremely well and is intuitive. Microsoft's works with everything, eventually. Microsoft will never, ever, ever come up with a piece of functional engineering as breathtakingly beautiful as the iMac. Still, Apple lost the operating system war. So it went elsewhere.