The speculation on Apple and Intel will be over soon, but I wanted to comment on one of the big questions I’ve seen floating around this weekend, “Why not AMD?” Here’s one example of what I’m talking about. I think that money is one factor people are leaving out of the argument, which generally centers around AMD’s current superiority and pace of innovation. Intel could win this fight simply by cutting Apple an incredible deal on parts. I’ve found that it’s almost impossible to think about any business decision without at least considering the money side of the equation, and it’s one most people seem to be ignoring.

Update: Apple is moving to Intel as it turns out. Steve Jobs reported that every release of Mac OS X has been built on both PowerPC and x86, and that developers will need to migrate to XCode 2.1.

Another update: I’m not surprised (or disappointed) to read that while Apple computers will have Intel processors, Apple has no plans to let you run their operating system on non-Apple computers.