Jack,
You are correct that a rumour "come true" doesn't mean that it wasn't made up initialy. However, you also can't assume that a rumour IS made up, as opposed to a genuine leak. If they were all made up there wouldn't be legal issues right now between Apple and ThinkSecret, would there?
The Marklar rumour that I saw over and over again was "OS X on x86" or "Apple has OS X x86 hidden in a back room". It was always the site/forum speculation that blew it up into "OS X on generic PC".
The rumour also existed because there are (as of Jaguar anyway...sorry no more recent machine to check it on right now) quite a few references to i386 in the /System/Library folder that don't really need to be there otherwise, so there was some slight basis for it at least.....
I do agree that few people took it seriously (thank you for that phrasing refinement, Mr. Stoup :) ) that Apple would release an x86 machine, the general consensus that I saw seemed to be that the "OS X x86" rumour was very likely true in some fashion as a back up or emergency plan....it would seem that SJ, for whatever reason, decided the emergency was now.
*sigh*
Okay, where to start?
How about here.......OS X on Intel was NOT a well guarded secret. Rumours of "Marklar" have surfaced on various sites with almost the same frequency as "Son of Newton" and "Disney buying Apple", and for just as long. ie right back to the public beta, which still had the x86 references in the system library. The only real surprise here was the timing.
While I do agree that Apple would be silly to not continue compilation for the PPC future (Cell, ill-equipped or not) to keep the platform truly portable, it would seem to me that a return to PPC is pretty unlikely if the main reason for leaving was monetary (IBM wanting Apple to pay for development, that is). The monetary realities aren't changing anytime soon, and I sincerely doubt that, after changing architectures, SJ or Apple would want to be in the only-vendor-using-the-chip seat again.....
If the Cell architecture really takes off the way the hype would lead us to believe, then you can bet that the other chip manus will produce something competitive PDQ and Apple will be able to use it. If it doesn't take off (or is unsuitable as a desktop CPU, as would seem), then Apple has successfully avoided it.
Apple Switching Back to PowerPC?
Apple Switching Back to PowerPC?