Intel has decided to hitch their wagon to a company that has a proven track record in both following and creating technology trends. This is bad how?
We will see if Intel stands to profit from their relationship with Apple. So far, so good. AMD still sits in the wings, and they already have a proven track record with Apple through their graphics division. Who knows what the future will bring?
Apple has also had a long and fruitful relationship with ARM from its inception. The only reason Apple would switch away from ARM processors is if Intel were to offer a low power x86 alternative that is competitive with ARM processors. This may be possible, and it would go a long way to simplify their code base if they didn't have to support an ARM flavor of iOS and an x86 flavor of OS X (Apple did away with the PowerPC version of OS X with the release of 10.6).
To all you Apple-haters out there...you have long been predicting the demise of this company. You have derided them for their "expensive" hardware and their closed-architecture OS. I too spent a number of years swearing at "Macintrashes." But I changed my stripes years ago when I finally realized that Apple created a great development platform with OS X, and the GUI is simple enough my wife has no problems using it to check her email, chat (via Skype and iChat) with her friends and get on facebook to upload pictures and update her profile.
I appreciate not having to clean her machine from the various forms of malware that her previous Windows laptop seemed to collect from her various roamings across the internet (even with AV and anti-spyware). This was at least a monthly occurrence, and no amount of grumbling by me would change her ways. So the next chance I had, I bought her a MacBook and haven't looked back since.