The common wisdom about the Mac is that the iPod's "halo" coat-tails has been pulling the Mac along behind it — it's the Mac puppy that follows Windows customers home with their iPods. This halo tag line is now a constant refrain by the press and analysts that can be found in almost every story about the Mac. The problem is that it's mostly nonsense. This week Apple reported that it shipped 2,164,000 Macs in its fiscal Q4. That's 34 percent year-to-year growth. This is the most Macs ever sold in a quarter by 400K units. And at the end of the week, Apple will release Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which could spark a hardware upgrade cycle in the...