Over the weekend, Daniel Eran Dilger, writing for AppleInsider, shared a post titled, Apple’s shift to ARM Mac from Intel at WWDC will define a decade of computing.

The whole thing is worth reading, but this bit captured a historic sequence, one that I’m sure Intel regrets:

The first was the iPhone, which Apple initially wanted to power with an Intel-built XScale chip. Intel’s chief executive at the time, Paul Otellini, initially said no to Apple, fearing that its phone project wouldn’t be successful enough to justify Intel’s investment.

That turned out to be wildly mistaken. Within just a couple of years, Apple’s success with the iPhone was so obvious that Intel itself desperately wanted to work with Apple on future mobile products, particularly its upcoming tablet. Intel expected Apple to select its upcoming x86 Silverthorne mobile chip, later renamed as Atom.

But this time Apple said “no” to Intel, and instead initiated the development of a project to build a new customized ARM “System on a Chip” that could power both its upcoming iPad and subsequently iPhone 4. The project was delivered in 2010 as A4.

This definitely goes down in my book as one of the biggest missed bets in tech history.