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Apple has been getting its chips from IBM, a reliable source -- but a single source, which means that it is subject to outages. Furthermore, a threat from Apple about leaving the comfortable fold of IBM for a competing chip manufacturer keeps IBM on its toes.

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Finally, successful talks between Apple and Intel don't necessarily mean that Apple will base its products on Intel CPUs. Intel has a number of other products that might help Apple, so don't be surprised if the talks don't center on Intel's CPUs at all.