ITWire

The source said that Apple was in fact no stranger to the PC market space, with by far the most number of iTunes downloads coming from PCs and had lately begun "pushing the envelope further" with the release of Safari for Windows.

It is understood that the first version of PC OS X will be available both as packaged software sold through Apple retailers and as a download on or before September 30 2008. The source said that Apple was also talking with tier one OEMs, including Dell, HP, Acer and Lenovo, to negotiate the release of notebooks and desktops with pre-installed versions of PC OS X.

When asked if PC OS X would be offered as an optional download with the next update of iTunes, the source looked thoughtful but said nothing.

When asked if Linux could be a possible threat to Apple's PC operating system aspirations, the source said: "Linux has had more than a decade to make an impact on Windows market share without success, so why should we be worried."

It is believed that upon hearing the news of Apple's move into the PC space, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, has made efforts to re-establish the ties his organisation severed with Intel early this year. Mr Negroponte is believed to be keen to get a cut down version of PC OS X onto the OLPC XO computers as soon as possible.

Despite the best efforts of iTWire, neither Steve Jobs nor Fake Steve Jobs could be contacted for further comment.

OK - time to come clean now that most time zones ticked over to April 2. This story is actually an April Fool's joke (as if you didn't already know). I must, however, express my surprise at the number of people who were taken in by it. One forum reported that PC users were actually searching the Web to see if they could source beta copies of PC OS X! This suggests to me what I've long suspected - PC users really would love Apple to make its operating system available to the wider world. Unfortunately, there's not much chance of that happening - or is there?