{mosimage}At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference today, CEO Steve Jobs announced plans to deliver Macs using Intel microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007.

During his keynote, Jobs revealed that Mac OS X has been "leading a secret double life." Every release of Mac OS X has been built secretly for both Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. For the last 5 years, Mac OS X has been "cross-platform by design." Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac."

This opens up a whole can of worms. Are they going to continue to develop OS X for PowerPC and Intel for a period of time ? Does it mean the PowerPC based machine I bought this year is obsolete as soon as the Intel version is available ? I just hope I get to use my Mac for longer than 1.5 years, before I'm looking to either go stale (no updates) or look for another machine.

Here's UserFriendly's latest comic, along with a number of comments from Appletalk users in response to the news "Apple will be no better than alienware. Just a pretty case.", "I'm in shock! I can't believe it's finally happening." and "I've already got an intel box ... I dont need another".  "The Intel move could cause confusion for Mac users, hurt the open-source Linux movement, could create some short-term risk with AAPL stock, and may harm the Mac market in the short-term, according to developers and analysts" from MaCNN. 
 
Someone on Slashdot paraphrased Obi-wan ... "I felt something, a disturbance in the network, as if a million mac zealots cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced ". Classic.