What I don't understand about the switch... (Score 1)

...is why, once Apple OS becomes available on an almost PC-compatible platform, won't people just hack it (would it take much?) to run on any old (or new) stock PC, and run pirated copies all over the place, and ruin Apple's market for hardware. Seems like the switch to Intel could be bad business move for Apple, since they stand to loose the uniqueness that keeps them alive and doing rather well. Whaddaya think?

....

I'm also looking at this from another, more personal angle. The sad truth is, I need WinXP for much of my work. I don't want to be busting anyone's balls here, but a lot of embedded systems development software is Windows-only. And a lot of people need to ship a Windows version before anything else. So, not that I like Windows development much, but, more often than not, I get hired to do some Windows drivers, and an MFC application or two to go along. I get quite a few of these jobs - where the overall coolness of the project (and the money:-) more than offsets the need to use Windows.

Now, I like Apple hardware a lot, and the only thing that stopped me from buying an Apple laptop so far was that it wouldn't run goddamn Windows, so I'd need to own another, PC-compatible, machine as well. And I just don't have time for that many computers:-)

But, it'd be extremely cool if I could, so to speak, have an Apple, and eat it too. In other words, triple-boot an Apple machine. Then I could use it for any work that I do, and the coding I do for fun too - which would even cooler. Anyone know what it'd take to run WinXP on one of these new ont-yet-existent things?