Well they bloody went and did it.
I am of the opinion that it is good to know your enemy. It really helps if you know who you are up against.
For as long as I can remember the enemy was the duopoly of Microsoft and Intel. Wintel was a phrase that struck me with loathing.
There have of course been consistant rumours since the StarTrek project at Apple many years ago that they have been working on a intel compiled version of MacOS for the alternative processor platform. It turns out that StarTrek wasn’t the end of it.
NextStep, the ancestor of OS X, was originally developed for Motorola 68030 and then ported to x86 when the hardware side of the company was sold off and Next became OpenStep.
The OpenStep OS was ported to PowerPC when Apple bought the company and Jobs came back to Apple. Apparently, privately, all versions of the new OS have been also ported to Intel as well as PowerPC. Not only the OS either, every app that they have produced has also been tested on Mactel.
Jobs is quoted as saying that the complete trasition will be made by 2007 with the first machines in 2006.
My friend Dave, an exponent and staunch defender of the Wintel duopoly is going to dine out on this for months (possibly years). I’ll never hear the last of it.