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Earlier I mentioned Apple could perhaps get out of the hardware business, keeping operating systems and apps and porting them over to an Intel platform. Or maybe Apple could drop the PowerPC platform for Intel and stay in the hardware business. I like the idea of an Intel-based Mac that could be sold with a "double your Windows back" guarantee for people who want to switch to Windows after using Mac OS X. More likely, it would be used as a dual-boot machine for folks like me whod really rather use a Mac but have Windows apps we just cant do without. If Apple were smart, it might also build Mac OS X for Intel atop a Linux of some sort. Im not sure why FreeBSD, which lives under the current Mac OS X, isnt good enough for the Linux crowd, but it doesnt seem to be. So if youre going to port the OS to Intel, why not make the switch to Linux? When I think about an Apple-designed Intel box capable of running Mac OS, Windows and Linux—perhaps all at the same time—I really get excited. I also get really depressed because I know this will never happen. Just like I know Apples servers ought to be a bigger deal with enterprise customers than they will ever be. But at least I have some hope the server business will improve—while an Intel-based Mac is pure fantasy. Check out eWEEK.coms Macintosh Center at http://macintosh.eweek.com for the latest news, reviews and analysis about Apple in the enterprise.

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