It seems to make sense for Apple to talk to alternative suppliers, if only to keep Intel on their toes.

I wonder though, whether there are any places in Apple's lineup where AMD chips are a better fit than Intel. I can't really think of any.

This leak is merely a public negotiating tactic to get a better deal from Intel. I doubt they'd drop Intel for AMD even if this generation's chips are faster/better.

I'd like to see Apple move to POWER7 in Xserves. Then we'd really be cooking with gas. The only issue would be how happy IBM would be with a(nother) competitor Unix.

From a marketing perspective, you have to wonder what sort of dilution effect this would have on the Apple brand. Apple is (generally) known for producing high quality products with plenty of power underneath the hood. The introduction of cheaper, slower performing chips to create a sub-tier of macbooks, etc., doesn't really gel with the current Apple brand image.

If anything, the talks concern GPUs, NOT CPUs.

However much I dislike Intel, and however much I like AMD, the fact is that today AMD just cannot compare to Intel in the mobile segment in terms of power consumption and heat dissipation. There is just no way that Apple would make this kind of "switch" for their desktops or laptops. The closest plausible scenario would be a switch for their XServe segment, to bring more cores to them at a lower cost.

I am 100% certain that the next time Apple makes a brand/manufacturer switch of CPU in their desktop/laptop segment, you will see ARM written all over it.