"But I think until we see Mac Os X running on PCs, we might be installing Windows on our MinMacs fitted with Intel processors. And guess who will be eating the Apple pie ... Windows"

I highly doubt that, seeing as apple is a hardware company. Even if windows is installed on EVERY apple computer that is made running on intel platform, apple will still have sold a copy of the OS, and the hardware. Apple get's the money, and if anything, MS will be the ones losing as the installed copies of windows will probably be pirated.

your completely wrong esp. about microsoft winning: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html

apple will never become aprimarily hardware company and use a MS os it is inferior and not innovative while apple whom consistantly is advancing the industry.... read the article

You guys are jumping the gun a bit if you ask me. I wouldn't rule out hackers bridging the gap eventually, but there is a lot more hardware than the processor that makes a PC a PC and a Mac a Mac.

Whatever changes Mac needs to make to their architecture, I doubt it will include a PC compatible I/O chipset and BIOS. If Windows is to run unemulated on Macs or Mac OS unemulated on PCs, a LOT of tinkering will be required.

I think this move by Apple is pretty clearly all about Macs staying at a competitive processing speed with PCs. PowerPC technology just doesn't advance as quickly.

If it were up to me, I would have chosen AMD instead. That way, they'd have processors that are as fast or faster than Intel's, and cost less. They could turn this into a larger profit margin on their overpriced status symbol machines. I suppose they decided to put brand name recognition first.

The Apple move is, while scarey (the hackers seem to have cracked the hardware barrier already), I have a theory that one of the many strategies behind the switch to intel is Wine, the opensource reverse-engineered windows API clone for linux/BSD. Think about it, embed Wine in the Finder and most Doze apps will run native on X86 macs. There are probably at least a dozen good reasons for Apple to switch to Intel, and lets face it, they know their business model better than we do, but embedding Wine would see the last compatibility barrier between Macs and PCs fall. Microsoft could only beat this by completely changing their API, making legacy systems incompatible, a lose-lose scenario.