A friend sent me a pointer to an eWeek which states that Apple has a build of Mac OS X for x86, code-named Marklar, that they keep up to date at all times. Obviously it’s a necessary hedge when the PowerPC falls further behind the x86 processors every time a Intel or AMD release a new series of processors. Of course, even if Apple could release x86 machines tomorrow that would run Mac OS X, all of the existing Mac OS applications would have to be ported to the new hardware platform, which would derail Apple for quite some time. If Apple does make the big processor switch, I wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of handling the relations with Mac OS developers.