Apple bought P.A. Semi in 2008, a company founded by Daniel Dobberpuhl of DEC Alpha fame. Clearly they had something brewing on the CPU front.
What might've been surprising is them getting into the big, high performance desktop-class CPU segment and leading the industry in efficiency and performance HEDT chips for desktops.
And Intel's relative irrelevance is certainly surprising, as is them losing the fab game to TSMC.
Don't forget Itanium, Intel's other dead end architecture. It's actually kind of amazing that Intel recovered from both at the same time (for the most part).
The Commission filed an administrative complaint against Intel Corp., the world’s leading computer chip maker, charging that the company had illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly. The complaint alleged that Intel engaged in a course of conduct to shut out rivals’ competing microchips by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In particular, the complaint alleged that Intel unlawfully maintained its monopoly in relevant central processing unit, or CPU, markets, and sought to acquire a second monopoly in the relevant graphics markets, using a variety of unfair methods of competition. In August of 2010, Intel agreed to a settlement containing provisions that would undo the effects of Intel's past conduct, and prohibiting Intel from suppressing competition in the future.
DEC -> AMD (Dirk Meyer, Jim Keller)
DEC -> PA Semi -> Apple (Daniel Dobberpuhl)
[1] https://www.wired.com/1997/10/intel-dec-settle-alpha-chip-di....
[2] https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/archived/resources-ar...
[3] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/intel-gets-more-key-...
[1] yes, I know ARM64 looks nothing like the ARM ISA of 1990.
"They focused on servers, uh, you know, like for http. Those are really big in the future"
"Oh, weird"