Sandman
In article <kuel57$7k8$1@dont-email.me>, Flint wrote:

Flint
http://vr-zone.com/articles/thunderbolts-great-pcie-hope/50677.html

A compromised effort to salvage TB that is too little too late.

I hate to say it, shades of the Firewire fiasco...

I will also say this, this time it is through no fault of Apple's, however. This is purely Intel's screwup...

Sandman
The above was posted 08/14/2013 by Flint. Seems Thunderbolt is live and well still, eight years later. :)

In comp.sys.mac.advocacy ZnU <znu@fake.invalid>wrote:

Looking at what Intel and IBM have in the pipe, the idea that Apple would switch to Intel processors for its computer line is blatantly absurd. It might have made sense in the dark days of Motorola stagnation; it makes no sense at all now. In case anyone hasn't

the movement these days is in the opposite direction -- Microsoft has picked PPC for its new Xbox.

Moreover, it's unlikely Apple could make the switch even if they wanted to. Emulating the PPC is notoriously difficult, and any new system which couldn't run old software without a recompile would surely be a flop; there would be no way to orchestrate a smooth transition, and lots of apps would probably just never make it across at all.

Assuming Apple and Intel are actually in talks, there are a lot of possibilities much more likely than Apple adopting Intel chips for the Mac. Apple could be looking for a chip for a media appliance or wireless device or some other embedded application, for instance. Maybe they want to use Intel's XScale processors in a new video iPod or something. (These processors are based on the ARM architecture, which Apple used in some Newton models.)