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Sources Say Apple Originally Planned AMD Chip For MacBook Air

Posted by timothy on from the llano's-just-a-town-in-texas dept.

Several media sources (here's PC Magazine's version), all seemingly based on an account at SemiAccurate citing (but not naming) "multiple sources," report that Apple originally planned an AMD-chip based MacBook Air, rather than the Intel-based version that emerged later ("Plan B," says the report).

2 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. In summary by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative

    The AMD chips had a significantly better GPU, at the cost of a slightly slower CPU (which is a good tradeoff). Apple didn't go with it because AMD couldn't guarantee the volumes that Apple needed.

    And this is essentially the story of AMD for the last decade.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by allanw · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obviously power consumption is important but performance is also very important. An Atom is an extremely cheap CPU that doesn't deserve to go in a $1000 laptop, like I said. Otherwise you can take the argument to silliness by asking why Apple didn't go with ARM or something.

    I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price, considering that the Air comes with an SSD and a Sandy Bridge CPU.