Yeah, x86 architecture is a weird old thing, and by old I mean nearly THIRTY YEARS old! It's one of those things that refuses to die, like a Toyota Corolla. But it's what made PCs what they are. There's no other system that's (almost) completely backwards compatible through all the generations, and has such a vast variety of hardware and software available for it. I really don't know how they could change to a different CPU platform, unless it's fully compatible with x86... and faster of course...
