In 2001, Transitive Technologies demonstrated a technology called "Dynamite" which allowed code written for one CPU to be run efficiently on another CPU. This "translator" was said to dynamically translate and accelerate binaries -- claiming to provide substantial performance over traditional "emulators". Recent numbers claim 80% performance matching.
Some more details came in 2003 at which time a "major" customer was reported. While speculation pointed towards Apple, no reliable reports emerged.
Transitive once again made headlines in September 2004 when they announced a derivative product called QuickTransit. They have since announced having a number of customers including Silicon Graphics Incorporated.
QuickTransit allows software compiled for one processor/operating system to be run on another processor/operating system.
According to an unconfirmed report, there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support this technology for the x86 platform. Beyond allowing Tiger to run on x86, perhaps more significantly is the potential to also allow existing Mac OS X applications to be run on the x86 (PC) platform without recompilation. Otherwise, requiring developers to recompile all current Mac OS X applications has been seen as a major hurdle in providing Mac OS X on the PC.
Other arguments against such a transition would, of course, still hold. Apple has traditionally been a hardware company, with the bulk of revenue coming from Mac hardware. The past few years, however, has seen software become a larger portion of their revenue.
