[rsynnott]

While Apple probably didn't help Intel design the Core 2 Duo (they only had serious in-house processor design stuff recently, and it's ARM-oriented), it's quite possible they exerted pressure on them to make such a thing. The Core Duo and Core 2 Duo were a _major_ turnaround for Intel; they essentially abandoned the gigahertz at whatever price doctrine they'd been pursuing since the P4.

The Core Duo, in particular, was essentially _only_ found in Macs; it had very limited deployment elsewhere. It fits very well with the circumstances of the Intel switchover; Apple couldn't have used the P4M for its laptops (far too power-hungry vs the G4), or the PM (barely faster than the G4 at all, used somewhat more power).

[jarek]

Yes. The grandfather's post claimed Apple's CPU engineers were involved, and it is that characterization I object to.

Incidentally, as I own a Thinkpad with a Core Duo CPU (July 2004 T60p, SL8VN), I think it might have been more accurate to emphasize "essentially" rather than "only."

[rsynnott]

Yep; they did make it outside Apple, but only barely. There were a few products from other companies using them, mostly low-power laptops, and of course they lived on for a year or so more as a budget chip branded as a Pentium.

[eropple]

Core Duo was in a ton of Dells, HPs, and so forth.

(Not that most of what you've been saying is untrue, but this particular part is a bit dodgy.)