The Register's recent assertion that Apple is hooking up with Intel to hedge their bets against a sudden horrible PowerPC death touched off a firestorm of debate. They claimed that the only thing preventing IBM and Motorola from just chucking the chip's development out the window was "contractual obligations," and that PowerPC's future is shaky enough for Apple to start forging alternate plans based on Intel's increasingly-late 64-bit Merced processor. Needless to say, a massive cry arose from the Mac community-- part of it was surprise, part incredulity, part sheer indignation, and part horror. But if you found it easy to shrug off The Register's rumor as mere fiction just because it came from a single source, you may find it just a little tougher to ignore once you read their follow-up story.

Apparently, The Register's source for this information is a "senior figure within Intel's Architecture Group," who claims that Apple is indeed working with them on 64-bit versions of Mac OS X for Merced, because IBM and Motorola have such different ideas about where the PowerPC should head next, developmentally speaking. (We've already seen the beginnings of that schism, most overtly with AltiVec-- Motorola digs it, IBM does not.) Basically, Motorola sees PowerPC becoming an embedded systems chip, while IBM sees it more as a server processor-- and neither of them really see its focus being Mac systems. Does that mean that Apple's really looking to migrate to Intel instead? No, but it's less outrageously improbable than it might seem at first. After all, Mac OS X Server for Intel already exists, albeit only within Apple's labs. What if Apple really did release X Server for Merced-- X Server only, not Mac OS X-- as a direct competitor for Windows 2000? It probably wouldn't hurt their hardware sales much, and it might really gain Mac OS X Server some serious exposure and market share. After all, a Merced-based server running Mac OS X Server could still NetBoot a few dozen PowerPC-based iMacs. It's all conjecture, of course, but it could happen.

Unless you believe Apple Insider. They were skeptical enough of The Register's broad, sweeping statements in the original article (like how Apple was expected to drop PowerPC completely by 2003) that they went straight to the top and asked Steve Jobs. According to the Big Guy Himself, rumors of migration to Intel technology are "total fiction." So it's up to you to decide whom to believe. Personally, we wouldn't be all that surprised if Apple is at least pretending to be talking to Intel in hopes of spurring IBM and Motorola to come to an agreement on the PowerPC's future-- but that's just us being our usual lovable paranoid selves.