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Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD

Posted by Zonk on from the low-power-and-made-of-chocolate dept.

An Anonymous Reader writes "Macworld has a piece looking at why Apple chose Intel chips over AMD's offerings when it decided to move away from IBM." From the article: "The reason, industry analysts say, is that Jobs has a clear goal in mind: innovative designs. And such designs require the lowest-voltage chips, which IBM and Freescale were not going to make with the PowerPC chip core--and which AMD has not yet perfected 'This is a practical, pragmatic Steve Jobs decision,' says Shane Rau, Program Manager, PC Semiconductors for market research firm IDC. Intel serves up the most complete line of low-power chips for mobile and small form factor computers, and a good-looking future roadmap for it. Also, Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries. "

3 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Transmetta by TomSawyer · · Score: 4, Informative
    In that case, why not use Transmetta!

    From the blurb: Also, Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries.

    --
    If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
  2. AMD and Intel by Exter-C · · Score: 4, Informative

    The intel range of processors for a long time have held the mainstream mobile processor power/watt and with the Pentium M they have consolidated much of that. however from many sources the new Turion 64 is meant to be very nearly as good in the power area however it does have 64bit memory addressing and all the benefits of the AMD 64 line of processors.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050830/index. html

  3. Ummm, who else... by alexhmit01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dell is larger than Apple...

    HP is larger than Apple...

    Then who?

    In the US, Apple is the #4 manufacturer of PCs, they were #8 in global sales, but I believe that they have moved up to #6 or so...

    What is my point? They are one of the LARGEST manufacturers of PCs... period. The fact that there are BIGGER companies doesn't make them a small player. Their aren't many bigger sellers of machines on the planet (there are about 5 of them)... Meaning while they aren't the biggest account, there are only 4 accounts that matter more...

    Remember, Apple is the #2 seller of operating systems and the #6 seller of PCs, that's not a small account. They ARE a Fortune 500 company (top 300 I believe), meaning that there aren't 300 companies in the US that are bigger than them.