The interest taken by Michael Dell in Mac OS X and the fact that he said he's ready to sell computers having Apple's operating system preinstalled on them might be considered a personal opinion, but it can also be a masked offer to Apple.

But if Apple decides to port Max OS X on the PC, then it will have to solve many problems, some of them even too tough to crack.

Mac OS X doesn't posses Windows's flexibility to run on any platform: from brand name systems to clones. As a result, Apple would be forced to demand very strict configurations from PC producers, a request not many would agree with.

On the other hand, porting the Mac OS X, even just on Dell system, would be declaring war to Microsoft and Windows. I wonder how the giant from Redmond would react to such a bold move from Apple.

Another problem is derived from the fact that only few days after the first PC with Mac OS X will be available on the market, hackers would have already started to distribute pirated copies, and that's a risk Apple cannot take considering the company's way of thinking about the subject. Apple cannot afford right now to give up on hardware sales and focus only on software production.

Therefore, despite Dell's allusions, Apple switching to Intel means only a change of components and nothing more.

Apple will know for sure where to go only after all the companies' systems would have switched to Intel.