More from Jobs' biography: in a parallel universe, iPads could be equipped with Intel Atom chips

Here's another curiosity from Steve Jobs' biography: in a parallel universe, the iPad could be powered by Intel Atom chips. Heh, if it was supposed to be bad, maybe he even played Flash! Just kidding, kidding. This wonderful idea of ​​using the processors from Chipzilla, would have come from none other than Jobs himself, having been removed by Tony Fadell. The then head of the iPod division would have gone so far as to, in a meeting where Jobs advocated the use of Intel processors on the iPad, shout "T wrong, wrong, wrong!" #COURAGE

A5 Intel Inside Processor

The executive even threatened to resign on the spot if he was not heard, and so much pressure pushed Jobs back. "I am not going against my best men," the then CEO of Apple would have said. Ufa! Fadell was, after all, right and today the iGadgets they are economical, efficient and powerful thanks to this crucial moment in Apple's history.

The cool thing is that Jobs changed his mind dramatically about Intel processors, comparing them to steamships, besides not thinking it would be beneficial to teach a lot of things to the professionals of the chip makers and then see them applying everything to competitor products. This fear was well founded, after all Ultrabooks are nothing more than just that, only applied to the MacBook Air.

The result of this change of direction is in sales of ARM CPUs for tablets: according to DisplaySearch Tablet Quarterly, highlighted by DigiTimes, sales of these chips are expected to grow 211% in 2011, reaching almost 60 million units and that number could skyrocket to 330 million in 2017. Meanwhile, x86 processors for PCs (and Macs) should not see growth anywhere near that, with the entry of Windows 8 causing some impact only from 2013.

(via 9to5Mac)