Apple move to Intel could break Microsoft's Hold

Sure seems to me that the landmark decision to move Apple hardware from PowerPC to Intel's line of CPU's could break some of the historical reasons why people don't switch. It's legacy investment of software. When I buy a new computer, I don't want to buy all my software again. I buy a computer because my old software runs too slowly. I like my old software, that's why I bought a new machine.

So what can Apple and the Apple developer community do? Make Windows applications work 'natively' on the Macintosh. Use projects like WINE (see DarWINE) - and look to port Ximian's MONO project to Macintosh to ensure that new .NET based applications can be ported or run Natively on the Macintosh.

OS/2 (originally a project between IBM and Microsoft) promised such a migration path, but for unknown reasons, OS/2 WARP never provided Win32 support, so only older windows apps would run.

For the first time since OS/2 there may be a logical shift from Windows to something else.