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Apple has played down the significance of the move that puts it on a level playing field with its rivals running Microsoft, but a recent advert seeks confrontation with the world of Windows.

'The Intel chip: for years, it's been trapped inside PCs, inside dull little boxes, dutifully performing dull little tasks, when it could have been doing so much more', goes the company propaganda. 'Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free and get to live life inside a Mac. Imagine the possibilities.'

Certainly, with the move to Intel, new Macs will finally be able to front up to PCs in the power stakes. As Steve Jobs mentioned during the launch, his promise of launching a 3GHz Apple G5 by the middle of 2004 still hadn't materialised, and Apple's PowerPC chips were as well suited to running laptops as Pavarotti is to running marathons. It's safe to say that Jobs wasn't particularly satisfied with progress of IBM's processor division.

'Apple says it couldn't get what it needed in powerful, cool-running processors from IBM or Freescale Semiconductor,' said Frank Gillett of Forrester Research. 'This should see Apple computers' performance improve, especially in laptops, which are the biggest growth market at the moment.'

For Intel, the contract couldn't have come at a better time, given that it faces intense competition from AMD, which last year overtook Intel in the important US desktop retail market for the first time. The company gets a new customer for its chips, from microprocessors for Apple desktops and notebooks to flash memory for the iPod, and Apple has also contracted Intel to oversee Mac motherboard development.

With easy access to Intel's compilers and native hardware compatibility across its platform, could Apple finally start to take on PC manufacturers on price and power as well as ease of use? Probably not.

The first versions of the Intel-inside Macs don't come cheap, with Apple maintaining its high margins. Deconstruction of the new iMac by research company iSuppli valued the parts at a mere $873 on a machine that retails for $1,300. PC manufacturers would kill to get away with margins like that.
Analysts also predict that Apple's move to Intel will have little impact on chip prices, even if Apple manages to double its PC market share to about 6 per cent worldwide.

Instead, the exciting developments for PC professionals

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are almost exclusively software based. There's every possibility that the new machines could run Windows, bringing a whole new arena to both software writers and hobbyists.

'No doubt someone will work out how to run Windows on the Mac, even if Apple doesn't technically support that,' said Dan Kusnetzky, program vice president at IDC. 'It's always amazing how quickly people look at vendors' strategic choices and find ways to do what they wanted to do anyway.'

The idea of running both operating systems on the same machine is an attractive prospect for anyone who regularly uses both Windows and the Mac OS - if only to free up desk space - but businesses remain unlikely to try this because support costs and accountability could be all but impossible.
'It's difficult to know who would support that machine if Windows was running on a Mac. Would it be Apple or Microsoft's responsibility?' Kusnetzky said.

Microsoft, however, said it would have no problem granting a Windows licence to Apple, in exactly the same way it currently provides licences to Dell and HP.

'Just like all Microsoft's OEMs, Apple can build industry-standard hardware that's compatible with Windows; Microsoft has an open specification and a process for certifying the hardware,' said a Microsoft spokesman. 'Microsoft would support Apple the same way it supports every other PC manufacturer.'

However, running Mac OS X on a significantly cheaper PC remains an elusive dream, because Apple 'will not allow Mac OS X to be run on anything other than an Apple Mac', said the company's senior vice president Phil Schiller.

Nevertheless, it seems certain that hackers will work out a way of doing exactly this, although it won't be easy since Apple's Intel-based Macs use extensible firmware interface (EFI), whereas Microsoft's Windows XP relies on BIOS, and the two aren't natively interoperable.

'Apple's future operating systems will, in some way, work on any of the newer Intel x86 chips, which means just about any computer, even if Apple attempts to stop that from happening,' said Apple commentator Allan Warner. 'The market will devise methods that allow the average person to overcome Apple's restrictions.'

In reality, however, the biggest news for Windows developers is legally porting their software to Apple. CodeWeavers, for example, has expanded its software porting capabilities to include support for Windows-to-Mac - in theory, significantly reducing the time and cost of developing Mac versions of Windows software. 'The shift to Intel chips is good news for Windows developers who, for reasons of time and expense, have never created Mac versions of their key applications,' said CodeWeavers chief executive Jeremy White. 'It's a new opportunity for them.'

Apple's move to Intel has hardly turned the world of Windows on its head. But it has thrown up new hope for cross-platform development, which in the long term may bring great benefits to PC professionals.