Apple and Intel’s relationship has always been a somewhat awkward one, and the news that we could have been seeing Macbook Airs with AMD chips would fully support that. Forbes reports that Apple would have chosen an AMD processor over Intel’s i5 and i7, but due to poor production yields from AMD, they decided to go with the latter.
Looking back, one AMD employee was convinced that it was in the bag were it not for the yield issues: “We had it,” he says. “But the yields didn’t come in.”
Another thing that will no doubt leave a bitter taste in the mouth of AMD is that, according to employees, Apple was pitched the AMD ‘Brazos’ chip for the new version of the Apple TV set top box, but again, Apple turned it down.