Are we to read into that, that Apple offer greener pastures for the future, and/or are Intel about to be found out in some skullduggery for which there is no viable defence?

Intel and MIcrosoft have earned fat monopoly profits for many years, but we can now see Apple has executed a brilliant decade long business plan to attack those margins while preserving its own.

For those that haven't spotted it, Apple could be a threat to Intel's profitability, now that Apple has its own in-house chip design team (via the PA Semi acquisition), and a complete OS and application stack that can be built for Intel, for ARM or even for PowerPC (to which Apple has IP rights). Apple must be feeling mighty pleased with themselves over this hire as smartphone and PC markets merge, and Apple's own processors go into their first shipping product (the "tablet").

sleepy,

Perhaps you would be so kind as to give me a nudge when Apple decide to make a Move/Movie On Cloud for CyberSpace Command and Control. It would also give El Reg a boost too and propel it from an also ran cub reporter outfit to Prime Leading Intelligent Concept Pretender and Globalisation XSSXXXXTender. ......... Major Media Source Lode Node.