AMD MacBook Air Plans Axed Over Production Stumble

I can remember years back when AMD was the processor to have for all out performance in your desktop. One year Intel put the smack down on AMD with a line of processors that was well beyond anything AMD had for pure performance in the desktop world and it's as if AMD threw in the towel and has been the runner up ever sense. It looks like AMD missed its chance with Apple sometime last year.

Semiaccurate reports that it has learned that an AMD-powered MacBook Air with a Llano processor inside rather than Intel was very near production ready roughly last spring. This is at the point when Apple and Intel weren't happy together. At what was apparently the last minute the mild Air update we saw last time we reviewed the Air was tossed out onto the market and the reason it didn't change much is reportedly because it was plan B.

Plan A would have been the first AMD processor under the hood of the MacBook Air. The chip is said to have provided the machine with many times more graphics performance at the cost of a bit of CPU power for the user. According to sources cited by Semiaccurate, AMD machines are still coming from Apple but Cupertino is waiting for the 64-bit chips to surface and then it's on.

[via SemiAccurate]