We admit it; as far as long-standing Apple rumors go, the "Mac OS on Intel" one sort of leaves us cold. Sure, the PowerPC is hideously behind x86 on the clock speed front (if not necessarily in terms of performance), and it's undoubtedly hurting Apple's sales. Sure, there's a ton of info revealing that an Intel port of Mac OS X would be a cakewalk, and there's plenty of evidence that Apple has indeed been keeping Intel builds of Mac OS X relatively current in its secret underground bunkers. But frankly, we just never saw all that much evidence that Apple was actually planning to move to the Intel platform (or ship a boxed version of Mac OS X for x86-compatible hardware), instead of just keeping the project warming on the back burner in case the PowerPC completely craters or Apple needs a bigger stick with which to smack Motorola.

Until now. You're aware, of course, that the original secret project to port System 7 to the x86 architecture was code-named "Star Trek"? (The project succeeded, though it was never released for political reasons.) You may also be aware that rumors of a "Star Trek: The NeXT Generation" project have been floating around for over three years now, ever since Steve's return to Apple. Well, against the backdrop of Mac OS X's Intel-compatible NeXT pedigree and its imminent release sometime within the next six months or so, faithful viewer David Gardner unearthed some startling evidence that the "Star Trek: The NeXT Generation" project is real and approaching at warp factor 7.

Check it out: the next Star Trek movie is, suspiciously enough, the tenth in the series-- and it's currently going by the title "Star Trek X"-- that's "X" as in "Roman numeral 10." Not enough evidence for you? Then take a gander at the Star Trek X logo and tell us that its glowing blue "X" doesn't look a whole heckuva lot like Apple's glowing blue "X." Suddenly the pieces all fall into place! Hopefully we're not looking at a simultaneous release, though, because STX only just signed a writer-- it's probably years from release, while Mac OS X is due by May at the latest. Then again, given the title of the porting project, maybe it's just the Intel version of Mac OS X that'll ship alongside STX's release. Yeah... That's it...