Apple Gearing up for OS War?

Remember four years ago? I do. Most Mac users were still dawdling along in Mac OS 9, the iPod had just been unleashed upon the world, I was still administering AppleShareIP servers (shudder), and the technical community was unwrapping their shiny Fisher-Price present from Microsoft.

However, nothing happens in a vacuum. Significant changes and decisions aren't made overnight and often require years of development, planning, and execution. For instance, Apple has been working on Aperture for 3.5 years; it's not just software that Apple decided six months ago to write. And I'm convinced the announced switch to Intel processors wasn't a decision made recently. Jobs said as much in his keynote that Apple's been compiling versions of Mac OS X on Intel boxes since its first version.

So what's Apple up to? Why the switch to Intel processors? It's not just for faster speed and a better roadmap. It's not just because IBM and Motorola couldn't deliver the speeds they had promised.  I'm convinced that Apple's long been planning nothing less than an audacious plan to grow their marketshare. And here's how they'll do it.

First, understand that the average consumer doesn't care what processor is in their computer, nor do they understand the differences between families of processors. They barely understand megahertz speeds. The jargon we're all familiar with (by necessity) is lost to them: CD-ROM,
CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, megahert, gigahertz, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte,
DPI, TWAIN...we may as well be speaking a foriegn language. And the manufacturers haven't made it much easier with every season introducing new trademarked words like Itanium, Celeron, Pentium, G4, G5,
Inspiron...ad nauseam. But here's what the general public does understand about computers: that software I picked on the shelf there won't run on this here computer? The consumer is either not going to buy the software or not going to buy the computer, and with Apple's smaller marketshare (and accompanying smaller software library),
it's Apple that loses out. So, how can Apple gain marketshare?

Four years ago, I wrote this little journal entry
about Apple purchasing Connectix's Virtual PC and integrating it into Mac OS X 10.5 so that no matter what software a consumer purchased, it would run on a Mac computer. And after Apple's Intel switch announcement last summer, I wrote a longer piece focusing on the use of Intel's Vanderpool virtualization technology.
The gist of this is that I'm convinced Apple's move to Intel is not just about faster processors, but about being able to offer a Mac that will run natively both Macintosh and Windows software (and by extension,
both Mac OS X and Windows OS's). People familiar with the excellent but prohibitively expensive VMWare know how great it is to be able to run,
for instance, five iterations of Windows 2000 server on a single box.
Wouldn't it be great if you could own a Mac that runs not only Apple's great software offerings (such as iLife) but also all those PC games and financial software!
Software emulation of Windows is too slow, but with virtulization technology at the hardware level, the speed hit becomes a non-issue and the software market for Mac users opens up exponentially.

The ironic thing in this scenario is that Microsoft wouldn't actually lose out. If Apple produces a computer that can run both Mac OS X and Windows simultaneously (not dual-booting), there would still need to be some kind of Windows license and payment involved. The losers would be Apple's actual competitors: Dell and the other computer manufacturers.
Perhaps there's more than we thought to Michael Dell's suggestion to Apple that they allow Mac OS X to run on his company's computers.

Macsimum news discovered a new patent
filed by Apple that seems to support this idea of running multiple OS's on a single Macintosh computer using virtualization technology.
Architosh picked up the story and expanded on it and other people have begun offering their own commentary on the idea. Even the Inquirer has begun stirring the rumor pot.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Apple hasn't looked at the consumer market and figured out a way to offer an attractive computer, 
easy-to-use sofware, and a secure environment that can run virtually any software on the shelf. Maybe the switch to Intel is only about faster processor speeds. And maybe monkeys can fly out of my butt.