Intel Is Seeking an Investment From Apple as Part of Its Comeback Bid

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

mfiguiere

30 points

19 comments

bloomberg.comTechstory

skepticalmixed

Debate

70/100

IntelAppleSemiconductor Industry

Key topics

Intel

Apple

Semiconductor Industry

Intel is seeking investment from Apple as part of its comeback bid, sparking debate among commenters about the implications for the tech industry and Apple's potential motivations.

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2-4h

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3.2

Comment distribution19 data points

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Based on 19 loaded comments

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01Story posted
Sep 24, 2025 at 4:43 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Sep 24, 2025 at 6:39 PM EDT
2h after posting
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7 comments in 2-4h
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Sep 25, 2025 at 1:39 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (19 comments)

Showing 19 comments

mensetmanusman

4 months ago

2 replies

China is taking Taiwan unless Xi randomly dies of a heart attack.

It’s safer to have an alternative to tsmc knowing this.

duxup

4 months ago

1 reply

China has been going to take Taiwan for a long time now, hasn't.

mensetmanusman

4 months ago

1 reply

They have finished construction on the largest field hospitals and civilian bunkers across the strait.

It’s part of official Xi CCP policy to acquire Taiwan.

Most experts put the move around 2027 when the next tranche of ships are finished.

bigyabai

4 months ago

You could at least do readers the justice of citing which policy you're referencing offhand (Chinese Dream 2049: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Dream)

bigyabai

4 months ago

Intel has never sold their EULV nodes before. They're a "substitute" in the same way eating from the trash substitutes a McDonalds meal.

Proofread0592

4 months ago

3 replies

As someone who has used an Intel mac, then moved up to a M3, please god no. Intel macs were some of the worst things Apple has ever made.

icedchai

4 months ago

1 reply

I felt 2012 - 2015 Intel Macs were pretty decent: the first Retina MacBook Pro, the iMac 5K, for example. It definitely went down hill with the Touch Bar and the MacBook Pros with the Core i9 chips. Those seemed like they were constantly throttling, fans sounded like a jet engine...

dwaite

4 months ago

1 reply

IMHO that is because Intel wasn't delivering chips meeting the specs they promised. Once you dropped it into a system and put a thermal/cooling profile in, the new chip didn't really perform better than the old one.

On the lower end, Apple just stopped releasing updates because there was no useful advantage to new chips.

On the high end, Apple was fighting between their desire to have a machine pleasant to use, and one that would fire the fans full speed at boot to keep up maximum performance without thermal throttling.

bigyabai

4 months ago

1 reply

Kinda? Apple was known to tune their ACPI tables pretty hard, it wasn't impossible for them to put a hard-limit of 70c like the other Wintel machines at the time. Instead they seemed to push the Turbo mode until you approached junction temp, which didn't seem like a smart idea for a mobile device. Especially those embarrassingly thin i9 workstations Apple tried shipping.

The behavior persists on Apple Silicon, it just gets there slower. Someone internally at Apple must have a vendetta against CPU throttling, I guess.

simulator5g

4 months ago

Heat transfer rates are higher when the difference in temperature is higher. So if the CPU temperature is below the maximum you're leaving some theoretical performance on the table. Someone at Apple has a hard on for performance data that's making them ignore real world consequences.

choilive

4 months ago

Most likely for the foundry business

pohl

4 months ago

I don’t think that’s fair. The move to x86 was a huge step up from the PowerPC G5s. That said, the move to the M1 was even bigger, so I can relate to the sentiment.

WheelsAtLarge

4 months ago

1 reply

Where's Microsoft? They have the most to lose if Intel goes under.

knowitnone3

4 months ago

1 reply

What is Microsoft losing? AMD is still selling x86 chips. There's ARM. They can port to RISC-V. OS isn't even their bread and butter anymore.

MBCook

4 months ago

1 reply

They’ve never successfully built up a non-x86 userbase on Windows.

An architecture switch where a lot of software won’t run well (or at all) is a big risk for them that people could start to go elsewhere in non-trivial numbers.

Apple, Linux, Chromebook.

Yes they have a compatibility layer for running x86 on ARM. They could make it for other archs. But that’s still a big effort and consumers may not trust.

jprd

4 months ago

1 reply

I think at this point, Azure and their OpenAI partnership are enough to weather the transition to ARM. It is just software, and Apple has (TWICE) shown how to do it right.

That said, has anyone checked in with Lisa Su on this?

MBCook

4 months ago

Apple has done it, but they’re not slavish to backwards compatibility like MS. They don’t have anywhere near as many games or random line of business apps, and I suspect their users are more loyal than much of the Windows base that just bought what was cheaper/most common.

osnium123

4 months ago

1 reply

Is this Tim Cook’s way of getting preferential treatment from the Trump administration?

pointyfence

4 months ago

It will be more than just Apple. Trump got in first. He'll arm twist the others to take token stakes and set up some working relationship. Nvidia doesn't need to take a $5B stake in Intel. Did Apple ever have a stake in TSMC? Whether or not this changes any of Intel's actual problems over the long term is a different matter.

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