MacOS Rumors claims that OS X Beta's have been demoed with startup-customization capabilities. The implication of this is that Apple is planning on allowing OS X to be licensed to 3rd parties.
They write "if Apple is indeed planning for the future of the platform outside of its proprietary hardware, then the future will be a brighter one for it."
So, again with Mac OS X for Intel? Who knows... but Apple only recently pulled the plug on clones. While they are in a much better financial situation, I don't see them putting themselves in that situation again - at least with the first release of Mac OS X.
An interesting observation however, is that NeXT moved from a hardware company to a software company under Jobs leadership.
