Apple and Intel
So everywhere I look, careless forum-lurkers and sloppy journalists are making completely specious assumptions that Apple's switch to Intel implies a switch to x86, x86-64, or IA-64. Now, we may very well be find that to be true eventually (tomorrow), but for now, there simply isn't any evidence yet that Apple has to switch architectures. And I certainly doubt they'd want to at this point. Isn't it more likely that they'd just have Intel manufacture the G5 for them (presumably with all the high clock speed and low heat features that IBM had previously promised), or perhaps design a G6 (or by any other name) that has Altivec and is backwards compatible with PPC software? After all the gcc 4 has done for them, it seems rather silly for them to abandon PPC now. Perhaps, they might even commission Intel to make a completely new, proprietary processor just for the job (though I think that's least likely of all).

Anyway, regardless of the processor, Apple will bend over backwards to build the most insane, proprietary architecture around it. From the end user's perspective, I think this is pretty much non-news with one exception: if the x86 prophets turn out to be right, pearPC might become a good deal faster due to virtualization replacing emulation for 90% of ops.