Actually they have been with the better chip company from the get go. They started out with the Motorola 68/6900 series. That was a screamer for it's time. IIRC, they've been RISC ever since. Would have been good if Apple worked with DEC when it first introduced the Alpha, but Bob Palmer CEO and chief fool at DEC wanted to get a 64 bit version of windows server. VMS was converted in a just a few months, but BP kept waiting for Gates to get the 64 bit version of Windows (NT5.0?) for 2+years. Gates put Palmer and DEC out of business.
"Gates put Palmer and DEC out of business."
Gosh, I'm sure he didn't mean to. [laughter]
I had a 68K in an Atari ST, very nice chip. But as the turn of the millennium rolled around we found that Motorola was no longer able or willing to supply decent chips for Apple. However, since IBM's fortunes rest in the higher-end chip business (not just embedded), Apple should have a supply of great cutting-edge chips for years to come.
Funny! And true! And pathetic.
NT, which was billed as highly portable, was, in fact, portable only in thoery because it costs Microsoft $20MILLION to QA a release candidate for Windows.