<<If Apple does switch to x86, i think that the 'MAC OS' would only support one type of motherboard, only a few types of video card, 1 type of CPU (AMD's clawhammer sounds interesting) etc etc.. so as to disallow direct competition with Windows XP (good, so MS won't get too annoyed) and prevent clones (which could still happen, but they would have to buy the exact same components as a x86 MAC - bit hard if the mobo is proprietory).>>
Nothing wrong with a hardware lock built into the motherboard to keep the O/S non-functional on non-Apple motherboards. Would be sweet for them to support either the Pentium4 or Hammer, though, so that users could upgrade the speed of their system by switching out the CPU with a standardized processor.
Is there anything the G4/G5 will be able to do specifically that the Hammer family will not? Seems like the Hammer is deep in registers as compared to past x86 processors, too.