Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Back in 2005, Switched On dubbed its first full year of existence "The Year of the Switch" as IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo, Apple announced plans to leave the PowerPC platform for Macs and Microsoft moved to PowerPC processors for the XBox 360. But the dramatic reversals we saw in 2011 made even some of those decisions look tame by comparison.
