I saw it here: https://twitter.com/asymco/status/260181615911776256<p>and I think it makes total sense.<p>Update: here's why.<p>Currently Apple is doing well with chips designed in-house on their mobile devices. It's not a stretch to believe that they would like the same thing to happen on Macbooks and Mac Pros.<p>Buying Intel obviously will benefit them in that they'll have finer control on the chip designs for these non-mobile devices than what influence they have now.<p>The alternative is Apple leaving Intel platform by championing some ARM architecture, which means they'll spend a lot of resources playing catch-up with Intel designs. I believe this situation not only isn't good for Apple, but also bad for the whole industry.
For one, all of apple's best-selling products use ARM chips. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4</a><p>Macs sell well, but most of Apple's revenue comes from iPhones and iPads.<p>Buying Intel would require spending most of Apple's fortune, they're just not important enough to Apple to be worth it.
It would be stupid of Apple to do so, because they have no core competency in running a semiconductor business. Apple's margins will be much better if the design and outsource the chip fab, rather than bringing it in-house. Apple purchasing Intel would also cause a large problem for the market since nobody really wants to buy from a competitor.
A. My understanding is that at this point Intel isn't that good at making mobile chips which is what Apple needs -- my other guess is that you'd also get into some government concerns about a monopoly