I have been able to kludge it on a Hackintosh :-)

your points are well taken, I think that if Apple took the MDF $$$ it would make them feel like they are diluting the Apple Brand and that Mr Jobs didnt invent everything. Tim Cook did say he was going to buy things with the $1000 Billion dollars Apple has in the bank

there are a number of things to consider, pros and cons for this scenario

Jeffrey Chan pointed out that the Pro Market has supported Mac during the dark days , and I believe that to be true once upon a time, yet i wonder if it is still true? I wonder as Apple has not refreshed (significantly) the Mac Pro Line in ~18 months. The Last release of Final Cut Pro was ghastly. So does Apple support the Pro Market?
Running a VM to enable X86 compatibility may be an issue, or it may not, I read recently a Russian company is working on on-the-fly x86 compatibility for ARM ala Transmeta, so this may become a feature that if it doesn’t take too many cycles may remove the need for a VM, just a licensing agreement

Enterprise adoption is another issue, this seems to be being driven by the BYOD crowd ( I may be wrong, however GigaOm has many articles a month on this being the case. Windows RT supports ARM, Office 2013 Supports WinRT on ARM, eventually this will be a non-issue if the take up rate on WinRT ARM gets high enough for MS to throw their weight behind it (remember MS is now a HW company)

Intel and Apple (based on news reports) have a somewhat stormy relationship, however they have both benefited from this relationship. Intel has given exclusivity to Apple (I.e. Thunderbolt, Ultra LV Processors for MBA,) and Intel has certainly been helped to gain market share by the relationship. There are a number of widgets that Apple doesn’t use that Intel provides to other companies, Quick Assist/Cave Creek, would make trans-coding much faster for video pro’s and other more valuable features too numerous to mention.The Full Intel 4000 Embedded GPU, this GPU by default supports 4K video, 8 simultaneous Displays and many other neat features, and future versions of Intel Embedded graphics will eventually catch up to the Discrete graphics and these are cores in the CPU , so they will take advantage of dies shrinks same as the CPU.

Atoms SOC’s may eventually be powerful enough to power a Mac Laptop, but why would Apple do that when Haswell is coming out in late 2014/2015? Double Ivy bridge performance in 17 watts or Ivy bridge performance in less than 17watts. Will ARM be able to match this in 5 years?
ARM is currently the leader in power and long battery life, will these be the case when all of the 64 bit extensions, caches, pipelines out of order execution and other features are not currently present in the ARM cores? Where will Intel be with Power consumption in 5 years? Intel’s Main problem is they have a leaky architecture, one hopes they will have made significant strides in reducing this by 2017!

Does Apple have the expertise to add all these features to their SOC, probably, if not now they will, if not they may cross-license AMD. I doubt Intel will ever become a foundry for Apple, Not in there best interest, nor would it be cost effective for Intel. It would cost Intel more money to Switch the production line back and forth from X86-ARM and back again then they would probably make in the deal.

The only people who care about all of this mental masturbation are the pundits, and the executive/employees of the associated companies. I switched to a Mac in Mid-2001, Was it because of the HW capabilities? The coolness of the brand, the exorbitant costs of the system?
it was none of the above, it was the OS combined with features of the SW , that worked better than the MS Windows /SW that drove me to change. It was features that saved my time and allowed me to be more efficient, the first couple of tries for OSX , were problematic, but now with ML it just works. what we as people who are knowledgeable of the inner workings of the computer sector seem to forget, is that most people who use computer/tablets/phones et al , is that they want them to have certain features and those certain features to Just work. if it works and is slow they will buy something faster.

Apple will most likely (in the future) switch to using ARM cores, Intel will eventually design processors that are energy efficient and powerful. I just hope that OSX just works, it fulfills the promise Linus made in the 1990′s, that i will be able to run Open Source SW, Commercial SW , have a nice Gui and still have a powerful CLI . So as long as they don’t Ubunt-ize or MS Windows OSX i will be happy and both Intel and Apple can continue their journey to take over the world

I have the 2011 MacBook Air now, and this thing is slow when I open more than 5 tabs in Chrome. And this is using an Intel processor.

Folks, it ain’t happening unless the performance of ARM is at least remotely in line with Intel. Laptops are different than phones or tablets. Think about it. If I’m a consumer worried about efficiency and power savings, then I’ll just buy a tablet and a keyboard accessory. A Laptop is a different use case all together.

Its true that you have more control and eliminate dependencies if you build everything yourself , but what is the cost advantage? Companies like Intel and AMD doesn’t simply manufacture chips based on somebody else’s design(could have exceptions). But they do a quite lot of R&D and new ways of designing and manufacturing. And they specialize on those. Its not like buying “Sparrow” or companies involved in Maps.

Why are people making predictions based on the Cash Reserve of Apple and Market Value of a competitor or a Company? Have seen quite a lot of rumours based on this.

If you look you’ll see that the Apple and Intel relationship isn’t that chummy. Apple delivered the Macbook Air and Intel turned right around and initiated their Ultra Book specification with the MBA copycat devices.

Apple cannot and will not take the next step until they are controlling their own destiny. ARM isn’t fully controlling it but it’s a larger step towards more autonomy.

Not only would they get Intel compatible parts, but they’d also get the 64-bit ARM tech that AMD is working on as well as ATI and all the graphics coprocessor technology (that they could use for both mobile and PC products). With AMD’s price currently in the toilet, This could be a great strategic purchase for Apple.

About Apple’s relationship with Intel:

1) Intel and Microsoft are still close allies. Microsoft has reemerged as a competitor that Apple dislikes. Their Oct 23rd product announcements only talked about 1 competitor, and it was Microsoft.

2) Apple ships approximately 13% of the PCs manufactured annually. While that doesn’t dominate the OS usage, it DOES make Apple the biggest individual PC manufacturer. That means they’re paying billions to Intel quarterly for processors. This is probably their biggest external expense by far.

3) Apple doesn’t like ANY parts to be single source. They are SCREWED if Intel starts to give them grief. And stories about Apple dumping Intel (for any reason) will upset Intel and have them rattling sabers at Apple in a heartbeat.

4) Haha. and of course, Apple doesn’t seem to like the idea of others getting any part of the money for their products. ;-)

5) Apple completely rejects all of Intel’s MDF dollars and branding programs. The new Retina Mac 13 SHOULD be able to so WiDi wireless display since it’s using all the correct Intel pieces, but Apple doesn’t include the software, nor will they add the WiDi logo to their products. Similarly, Both Retina Macs qualify as ultrabooks, but Apple won’t participate in that branding programs. So they leave millions of dollars of MDF funds on the table.

And I haven’t even mentioned the new Trinity (FM2) stuff from AMD that combines a full ATI graphics controller AND AMD processor on the same chip for higher performance and lower power usage, this is exactly the kind of stuff Apple loves. Plus the Trinity processors are a LOT less expensive than Intel ones, so it could help Apple get their price down without sacrificing their high margins.

Overall, I think it would be crazy NOT to consider that Apple has it’s eye on AMD! ;-)