Here I am getting all excited about an Intel based Mac, and now it looks like Apple is slowing its plans to bring me one. Shame on them! Seemingly, the company has signed a deal with Freescale to supply it with Power PC processors until 2008, and so might take three years to move to X86.
Under the deal, Apple does not have to actually buy any Freescale chips "other than work in progress that was in place at the time the agreement was executed." This seems to mean that it is pretty much wide open to buy what it likes and when it likes.
This all seems a little bit in conflict with what Apple said in June, which was that X86 microprocessors would "permeate the entire Macintosh product line by the end of 2007". But then you never know what is getting discussed behind closed doors.