Hybrid OS lovers were ecstatic to find that the latest Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard came with the complete release of Boot Camp, a utility which helps install Windows-based applications on the Mac. While the idea of Microsoft and Apple holding hands in solidarity was something rather farfetched a little while back, evidence of growing compatibility between the two rival OS types has slowly been piling up.

Asides from the fact that Intel chips have been finding their ways into Macs these days, other open source projects such as Wine have added some of the functionality to run Windows-based apps on the Mac. The trail started in a Wine mailing list which showed file types on the Leopard that were normally used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

Steven Edwards found an undocumented loader for Portable Executables which contains the said files. Because of this, people are already speculating that Leopard already contains the building blocks for the Mac OS X to begin running Windows apps alongside its own - Boot Camp already marking the beginning of this OS fusion.

However, don't get your hopes up too soon. This could just be leftover code from some behind-the-scenes project that the programmers were coming up with. We'll just have to wait and see if any of the evidence will actually be able hold some water. Who knows? Perhaps gamers will finally be able to rally under a unified PC/Mac banner someday.