This is not happening any time soon and the article is junk. Previous transitions (68K->PPC->x86) occurred when the successor CPU's were so stupidly more powerf

This is not happening any time soon and the article is junk. Previous transitions (68K->PPC->x86) occurred when the successor CPU's were so stupidly more powerful than what they replaced that emulation was a plausible tactic. This is NOT the case with x86->ARM. Apple's ARM chips are impressive and are approaching Intel's chip in some areas if you benchmark in certain ways and ignore the areas where they fall short. I think people underestimate the gap. Maybe one day ARM while be fast enough to make switching worthwhile and emulate x86 acceptably, but it is not this day. I would say it is more likely that Apple will end up releasing some sort of cross-CPU .NET/JavaVM-esque technology that compiles software locally if they really want to merge the product lines. But I am not even convinced that Apple wants to merge the two lines.