I'd have to check the dates on Itanium, but do seem to remember that's been around for a little while... I was an MSDN subscriber when win2k and winXP were in beta, then released. I'm fairly certain Microsoft sent an Itanium version of winXP beta, but would have to look through my disks to confirm.
The major things counting against Itanium when it was finally released (after multiple delays) was the $4,000 price tag (or there abouts) and also that due to it running x86 software in hardware emulation, x86 software got executed rather slow... Given a certain lack of IA-64 compiled applications which wouldn't need to be run in emulation, there wasn't much up-take. I'm pulling much of this from memory however, so would have to search some things to pull articles.
Anyhow, on the release date of Itanium, I had pulled this:
http://www.pcstats.com/releaseview.cfm?releaseID=599
Manufacturers to Ship First Systems in June; Servers and Workstations From 25 Companies Expected This Year
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 29, 2001 - Computer manufacturers are expected to introduce initial Intel® Itanium™-based servers and workstations in June, Intel Corporation said today. The company expects approximately 25 computer manufacturers to offer more than 35 models this year, as hundreds of hardware, software and application vendors provide products that support Itanium-based systems.
Someone might remember if this was the actual launch date, or preceded another delay...
Actually, Intel at the time did have a bit of a problem due to the release of the Athlon (which also bore some fruit from the AMD/Digital partnership, aka the EV6 bus used in the Athlon architecture for instance, was of DEC origin...)
At the time, I knew some people who were actually computer engineers, but one acquired a computer shop, and the other came out to help a life long friend. They built Intels, DEC Alphas, and Sun UltraSPARCs. Carol (the owner) was very much on the inside scoop wrt a lot which was going on wrt DEC, and we spoke/emailed each other quite frequently, up until the time she came down with a bad case of pnemonia she, unfortunately had not survived...
She and I also discussed some of the future proposals DEC had in mind (where they were planning on putting an end to the challenge IA-64 could pose at the high end, as well as the business relationship which existed between DEC and AMD at the time. Needless to say, DEC had held the performance crown against other manufacturers (such as Sun Microsystems) for quite awhile, and they didn't want to lose it to Intel
No doubt, Intel might have taken steps to try to make things more difficult for AMD, especially after AMD beat them at their own MHz myth, by releasing a 1 GHz Tbird before Intel was ready, and then being able to continue to clock their new CPU higher, when the old P6 arch (PPro through PIII), was towards it's limit for pushing the clock any further (without a die shrinkage).
The other side of this, is what happened with DECs engineering talent and the like. Intel bought DEC's fab, when DEC was in some financial trouble, and acquired various engineers who worked in the fab. Many of those however, chose to leave Intel and moved over to AMD...
Under that agreement, DEC got to keep it's development team, and they had already out-sourced some of their fabrication to Samsung... Was funny for awhile, as there were price wars that under-cut the price of the Alpha, and one could get a pretty decent one at mid-range PC (or x86, if that makes some happier) price points... I actually considered one as a second system for awhile, before the platform was no longer being produced.
Compaq had acquired DEC's development team, and began producing the Alpha, prior to dispensing it. It was from there, that AMD acquired many of these engineers from DEC as well...
I'd probably have to do a bit of searching to try to pull up links that could piece all this back together, if some are interested. That said, I can almost see us being asked to take this discussion to another thread, so this one can get back on topic wrt Apple's revenues
Certainly was an interesting turn of events all around; and yeah, it would be funny if Intel were to liscense x86-64 from AMD