They said it couldn't be done. Some said it shouldn't be done, others asked - why bother?

But two hackers known only as 'Narf' and 'Blanka', have achieved what Apple said was impossible and have got Windows XP to run on a Mac!

To the devout Mac worshipers they are heretics, but the repercussions of their actions will reach biblical proportions for us all. Their seemingly thoughtless mischief has fused the bipolar IT world of Mac & PC into one.

Instead of the traditional 30 pieces of silver, their reward was a mere $13,000. This was the prize for being the first to 'dual boot' Windows and MacOS X on the new Intel-based Apple hardware.

Ultimately Steve Jobs is to blame. He made the decision to switch from the PowerPC to the Intel processor platform making the unholy union theoretically possible. The first "Intel inside" Apples started appearing in the stores this January.

Soon after that Mac enthusiast Colin Nederkoorn kicked off a competition to see if it was possible for the two operating systems to run independently on the same machine. To tempt entrants, he put up $100 of his own money - a prize fund that grew as news about the competition spread.

The rules of the competition stressed that to win hackers must get both Windows XP and Apple's OSX running on the same machine and neither operating system must conflict with the other.

As late as 7 March, Apple technical experts were saying that the prize money was unlikely to be collected.

But it has, and no doubt commercial versions of Windows for Mac will start appearing soon, as Narf and Blanka seem to have told the world how they did it, rather than cut a deal with Bill Gates.

That's hackers for you - kudos being more important than money.

But why would you want to run Windows XP on your Mac anyway? You bought the Mac because you hate Windows and didn't want to swell the coffers of the evil Microsoft empire - right?

Unfortunately, cool as they are, there is a lot of software, particularly games, that don't currently run on Macs.

I've recently started using an Apple iBook at home myself. It was mainly a cosmetic choice. The old Dell laptop had become a central part of the living room decor and regarded by my other half as a blot on the otherwise stylish landscape.

Also, running iTunes, essential for iPod owners, on a PC was getting to be a pain.

And at the risk of committing heresy myself, once I got used to its foibles it's really not all that different from using a Windows machine, a point Apple tried to make once itself, in one of the longest running law suites in US history.

But thanks to these two crazy fools, we will all soon be able to buy Apple hardware without having to devote ourselves to the full Mac OS religion.