“The key here is to understand that the Intel switch wasn’t primarily about a POWER failure on IBM’s part, but about the fact that Intel gives great volume discounts for customers like Dell who go all-Intel all the time. And when I say “all-Intel all the time,” I don’t just mean x86 CPUs. Intel also makes the Xscale line of embedded CPUs, which implements the same ARM architecture that powers the iPod. Furthermore, Xscale can be used in a whole range of Apple-branded products, starting with the iPod on the low end and going all the way up to an Apple-branded handheld, or just about any kind other kind of gadget that Apple can dream up. “Mac vs. PC” is the past, and Apple isn’t going to try to maintain that dynamic. The future is in Apple-branded products and services that are tethered in some way to OS X.”

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050614-4991.html

Intel has two things AMD doesn’t. One, reputation and ability to spend LARGE dollars on marketing their chips. Apple can really hype the #1 chip maker working with the #1 computer manufacture. Two, supply, Intel has way more production capacity than AMD. They have the ability to produce way more chips at lower cost than AMD can. AMD has 2 fabrication plants, Intel has more than a dozen, for this reason alone it makes sense to go with Intel over AMD. If in a few years AMD build more production, maybe they can lure Apple away, but at that point it won’t matter as they make compatible chips.