But IBM announced a new low-power G5 not three months after Apple announced they were defecting to Intel, and you *know* that because Apple was part of the AIM alliance, they would have had access to that roadmap. I guess the real question was whether they could get them in quantity, because there were supply side issues with the G4 and G5s at times.
On the other hand, let's say IBM didn't and that Apple had to defect for the laptop market. They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot by asserting that the whole product line must turn Intel -- they've already committed to a double market with the Universal binary idea, and it's going to be a very long time before the Intel Macs displace PPC Macs in any large or significant quantity anyway, so why not continue to make PPC *and* Intel Macs? Sun makes x86 and SPARC servers together, so why not? The G5s could still inhabit the upper end of the market, or for bigots like me who hate the idea of an x86 Mac and will pay a premium, and the Intel chips could run the laptops if Steve-o were that convinced of their superiority.
I'm sure there are others that think like me, and this is probably why the cost of the iMac G5 has not gone down much if any -- Apple must assume there's going to be a run on them and they intend to capitalize.