“In 2010, it was reported that Apple was testing AMD processors in the MacBook Air,” Jason D. O’Grady writes for ZDNet. “Curiously, just one year later, Intel announced a $300 Million dollar fund to help unleash an army of clones to compete with the MacBook Air.”
“Steve [Jobs] had the foresight to see that if Apple acquired AMD it would get a treasure chest of patents which would help it defend against future lawsuits (like the recent case with S3),” O’Grady writes. “Most importantly, Apple would get AMD’s engineering team, which has historically innovated quite well despite a limited R&D budget resulting from very limited market access due to Intel’s unusual practices. (Dell alone reportedly received $6 billion from Intel between 2002 and 2007 to not buy AMD chips. Sometimes those payments exceeded Dell’s profits.)”
Read more in the full article here.
