It’s about licensing, dummy!

For the sake of clarity – and because, if I turn out to be right, I want to be in a position to claim Ultimate Smugness^™ – I’d like to restate my prediction for WWDC today:

I reckon Intel’s getting into the operating system business, by licensing Mac OS X. They’ll ship a custom version for very specific Pentium-based systems, targeted at corporate desktops. Apple will enable cross-compiling to fat binaries in an update to Xcode, and emulation layers will cope with everything else, with the likely and explicit exception of Final Cut Pro et al and possibly iLife (to avoid cannibalising high-end and home-user sales respectively).

I’m probably wrong, but hey, I’ve nothing to lose. And it makes about as much sense as all the other options. Now, pass the popcorn – show’s on at 6pm BST.