The history of Light Peak's origins are in dispute though, and what's interesting to me, is that Apple was NOT even mentioned at the IDF conference. It's not a secret project by any means, and it would be good PR for Apple to have their name associated with it had they been in it from the beginning.If they were running OS X, you can bet that Apple wouldn't have approved of them running OS X on non-Apple hardware.
OS X doesn't share a driver architecture with UNIX at all. "Standardized UNIX" doesn't really come into play at all. The OS X driver API is likely even more obscure than the Windows one.
That said, I do think Apple's highly interested, and should even be willing to spend some funds for code development. It's cheap, and less than peanuts when you think about what the other developers have spent on this.
A fast, optical 10Gb/s interface would be highly desirable, and notably in the enterprise market. If you think about it, it's as fast as 10G Ethernet without the additional overhead (IP stacks, routing,...). That gives a high speed interface directly in the system without the need for a card (though it does use PCIe lanes to connect to the system, they're routed directly on the board).
This is something Intel would be highly interested in, and the MP is NOT the only systems that use EFI. The Itaniums do as well (where EFI originated BTW), and why we actually have EFI based RAID cards. They only needed to develop drivers to enable it to function under OS X.
As Intel's products benefit Apple (they wouldn't have any computers without them right now), they'd most likely not complain. They'll certainly benefit from Light Peak hitting the market as well. And even though OS X's drivers aren't as easy as other versions of UNIX, it's still not that hard to do. I do think it would have been easier than Windows (which is the biggest PITA out there to develop hardware on IMO).
Why do you think drivers are so buggy/temperamental, even after a products been around awhile?