Wow. The rumors have been building for years, but most specifically in the last few weeks. But I thought I’d wait to hear it from Steve himself before commenting. Yup, he just confirmed in his WWDC keynote that Apple will be moving the Macintosh to Intel chipsets over the next two years.

This is a huge change that for years people have argued vehemently would never happen or would kill Apple if it did. We shall see. It is fresh and I still don’t have well formed opinions. It was clear IBM’s PPCs had started to lag recently, and they were having trouble making a G5 fit in a powerbook, so perhaps it makes sense.

The coverage is everywhere, so I won’t link to any particular one, but looks like they have the transition pretty mapped out. Most apps will just need minor tweaks and a recompile, others will be able to run in emulation at a still decent speed. They’ve had the OS running on both platforms internally for the last FIVE YEARS.

The coverage I read so far wasn’t 100% clear, but I am assuming you will still have to run OS X on actual Macs from Apple, and you won’t just be able to install it on your typical WalMart PC. I think that is key. But who knows what things will look like a year from now when they start shipping the first Intel based Macs.

The OS is really what makes a Mac a Mac, and the really good case design and usability and such, not the chipset. But still… even if it turns out for the best, this seems just a tad… dirty. Intel. Ick!

We’ll see how they do though. Could be very interesting.