To be fair, Intel’s had its fair share of woes in recent years. Namely, in the form of delays as it struggled to make the jump from 14nm to 10nm. Last year, the company also had to push back its 7nm rollout. Sure, the global chip shortage probably had something to do with it, but competitors like AMD haven’t had as much trouble making smaller, faster CPUs. An ex-Intel engineer also said last year that a big reason why Intel lost Apple was due to its poor quality assurance for its Skylake processors.
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It’s probably not a coincidence that Gelsinger’s interview aired just before Apple’s MacBook Pro event. The company is expected to launch two new MacBook Pros today, both running on the so-called M1X chip. As for how Gelsinger plans to woo back Apple…
“So what I got to do is make a better chip than they can create themselves… I gotta make sure that our products are better than theirs, that my ecosystem is more open and vibrant than theirs, and we create a more compelling reason for developers and users to land on Intel-based products,” Gelsinger said. “So I’m gonna fight hard to win Tim’s business in this area.”
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That’s a tall order, to say the least. Those Intel chips would have to be so powerful that Apple would take up the hassle of moving back from ARM to an x86 architecture. It’d also have to be worth giving up in-house control over its processors and software. At least Gelsinger acknowledged the pursuit would take years. As it stands right now, Intel’s got its work cut out for them.