I've read about AMD being pushed out by illegal practices by Intel and I too heard they were considered the underdog to Intel in spite of having superior products.(...)
The problem is with Intel having deals with manufacturers so they receive discounts in exchange for agreeing to use only Intel processors. If you're Dell, Lenovo or whoever else who builds computers and you don't agree to it, Intel makes your life hell by increasing prices. You lose the competitive edge because everyone else agreed to Intel's exclusivity and so they pay less than you for the same processors. So you have to increase your devices' price to compensate and your customers go to competition who have the cheaper processors and as a result cheaper computers.
In the end all major manufacturers go for the deal. Not being able to use AMD is not as much of a problem for them anyway, as customers know and trust the Intel processors because of Intel's marketing budget and signing the deal means having them for cheaper, while the alternative is going AMD-only which is the less popular option due to the market situation caused by this process in the first place, so we have an endless loop.
To answer about Apple, they have a long-term agreement with Intel since they switched from IBM's Power PC so whether they'd go for AMD depends on when it ends and what are the terms exactly, but Apple are quite close with Intel. In the global scale of things, Apple don't actually sell THAT many computers so it doesn't hurt AMD more than Lenovo, Asus or Dell since AMD get paid by the amount of processors shipped.
Since it's illegal to cut a competitor off completely from a given market, most of those agreements are written in a way that results in not applying to low range computers, so you see shitty, cheap laptops from major manufacturers running AMD processors occasionally which additionally creates association that AMD = cheap and shitty.
So AMD gets a major kick in the balls nr. 1 and can't do anything about it - it is in an endless loop of eating leftovers after Intel that are not good for how AMD is perceived but it needs those leftovers to survive.
See, 10 years ago AMD was still the uncontested processing king, yet Intel had most of computer manufacturers in its grasp (unfair business practices such as the agreements). So 8 years ago AMD adjusted their strategy by starting to focus and provide better value in the lower end so their processors are consistently chosen over Intel there (as mentioned that was the only place they could be chosen apart from enthusiast market of home computer builders). It backfired as since then the review sites have been criticizing AMD for not making good "performance" processors over the last years and thus not being competitive with Intel on performance, only on price. So AMD now after 8 years is changing that with ZEN that was showcased on today's event, thus my excitement, especially as they showed that they can still actually make better processors than Intel by making one and delivering it to the market and for a lower price too.
The risk is that despite having the better product, they might be killed off by the business side of things and Intel's unfair practices. I hope some manufacturers will stick with AMD this time and that would shake things up a little bit, because both AMD and customers in general deserve that. Even if for some reason you don't like AMD, real and fair competition is always good for the end users.
Kick in the balls nr 2 - benchmarks and several popular CPU intensive PC software is optimized for Intel processors, even if in general most software is not, it will run equally well on AMD and Intel processors because both are made to x86-64 spec, yet as soon as someone creates new benchmark Intel will be first to find a way to "contribute" its proprietary "patches". That's why AMD presents their benchmarks running various Open Source programs - everyone can see the code so they're fair and AMD knows they are not Intel optimized. Sadly, reviewers don't go that far, there's a general bias towards Intel amongst major tech sites. Since Anandtech started writing trash about AMD processors, suddenly you could see their site being covered with Intel ads and give-aways, and it is ever since then.
Curiously, the aforementioned x86-64 spec was, as a matter of fact invented by AMD in the first place so Intel pays yearly license fees to AMD just to be able to make 64-bit PC processors, lol. So Intel needs AMD, but at the same time Intel is constantly losing law suits and paying money to AMD for unfair competitive practices, yet they consider it worth it - they need AMD to exist, but not grow big enough to pose real competitive risk.
At this point Intel's quarterly marketing budget is bigger than AMD's total yearly revenue. Intel owns property, has government deals, big ad campaigns and deals with all device manufacturers. AMD after years of struggling against that had to sell even their fab business (basically their whole manufacturing infrastructure). They almost went bankrupt, so as a last resort move sold it to Global Foundries in return for covering the debt, but also in exchange for exclusive manufacturing agreement with them that includes high manufacturing prices and payment of yearly penalties for every processor they ordered to be manufactured at a different factory. Since Global Foundries started doing shit at manufacturing and being slow at adapting new manufacturing processes, this year AMD sold a quarter of its shares to Global Foundry to get out of the deal and get a better one allowing them to use quality plants more freely.
Additionally, in 2009 AMD sold their whole mobile division including the Adreno GPU and ARM processors to Qualcomm, now you might know those products under the "Snapdragon" brand. AMD had achieved more than Intel or Nvidia in the mobile space and had to give it away.
Hard to say those things since I currently get paid by Intel, but I very strongly dislike their business practices. AMD is the company embracing tech progress and making great products against all odds, and odds were always very much against them. It's the true underdog.
In the GPU world Nvidia is pretty much the same as Intel in CPU, plus they are making all tech proprietary, charging insane margins for their use (G-sync) even if AMD makes counterparts free (yet they are less popular due to less marketing or being disabled on Nvidia products).
Nvidia also pays off video game studios to add Nvidia specific optimizations and features that don't run on AMD cards (Gameworks, "the way it's meant to be played", physx). For comparison, AMD adds their features that are equals or sometimes betters over Nvidia for free and they can be used on any hardware, they never make their stuff proprietary.
As an addition, AMD cards have been actually significantly stronger and cheaper than Nvidia's, yet frequently ran games slower relative to their power due to Nvidia optimizations in games that Nvidia doesn't let others in on. AMD cards are actually used in processing farms due to their higher sheer performance.
A cute little example : AMD made a nice tech called Freesync that syncs the GPU with monitor's refresh rate to prevent tearing and to increase perceivable smoothness by synchronizing the monitor refreshes with frames displayed by the GPU in real time (basically to make it more natural - 1fps = 1hz).
AMD made it Open Source and offered it to become part of the Display Port Standard, which the DP committee gladly included, so now anyone can use it free of charge, as long as you have recent Display Port ports. It doesn't add a cent to the cost of a PC or a monitor, a great idea that the PC community appreciated.
Nvidia responded by developing G-Sync, which does exactly the same yet for monitor manufacturers to use it, they have to add 300$ to the price of their monitor, just for the license fee. Oh, and of course it can only be used with Nvidia cards.
But to prevent the additional 300$ spending to be ridiculous considering there are Freensync monitor that are otherwise exactly the same, do the same work and yet are 300$ cheaper, Nvidia disabled Freesync functionality on their cards (even though it's part of the Display Port spec and doesn't require anything to run it).
To make it sink in, Freesync would work on Nvidia cards if Nvidia didn't go through the effort to outright disable it on their cards, just so Nvidia card owners have to pay the huge extra for a G-sync monitor instead. What's more? Intel chose not to enable Freesync on their integrated GPUs too not to piss off their partner Nvidia, even though Intel has no counterpart to that tech whatsoever. Plus AMD is a competitor to both Intel and Nvidia (because AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs) so Intel didn't want to appear like it is "siding with a competitor" even if it adds value and doesn't cost them a cent.
To see how ridiculous it is think that AMD made their tech free, open source and part of a standard for a cable that everyone uses, it adds value, doesn't come with any negatives and is frankly very cool yet everyone disabled it on their GPUs but AMD.
If you think something was over-dramatic here, it is not, it is really how it is and I am sure there would be more to add if I had access to more than the public information anyone can easily find (the legal decisions, technologies, specs, official statements, employee essays etc.).
If you go to teh internets of the PC geeks, people are hating how our technological progress can be blocked by unfair practices everyone knows about, with Intel and Nvidia being actually rewarded for their bullshit.
Also, this is the founder of Linux saying "fuck you, Nvidia" at a public conference :
I am very glad that we have AMD as the underdog making amazing tech and I hope they manage to break through that bullshit.
