Because Steve Jobs never mentioned the next-generation – and originally Intel Corp-based – Rhapsody operating system, which Apple graciously paid him $425m for, during his end-of- hostilities performance last week, speculation remains rife that there’s longer term forces at play; namely Apple puts Windows NT on Intel servers. At least that’s the way our sister publication ClieNT Server News figures the deal may eventually pan out. The paper notes what outspoken Giga Information Group analyst Rob Enderle has to say about the whole affair: you can kiss Apple as an independent platform good-bye. It’s about to become a quasi- Windows machine and having climbed into bed with the Great Satan in Redmond, the other shoe to drop will be Intel. Enderle told CSN he talked at length to ousted Apple CEO Gil Amelio who, he said, had the same idea but worried that he wouldn’t have enough time or enough clout to pull it off. Jobs, of course, is a different story. Enderle said he’s one of the only people who can lead what Apple CFO and acting CEO Fred Anderson, called Apple’s rabid Mac supporters out of the wilderness in which they will all surely perish if something extraordinary isn’t done. Enderle figures that with access to the code under the patent cross- licensing it’s practically inevitable that Mac will grow more Windows-like, beginning with a high degree of interoperability. No matter what customized interface is on the top, he reckons, underneath it will become Windows, an agnostic Apple-branded PC.
