Heavens to Murgatroyd-- we really thought we'd finally driven a stake through the heart of all that largely-unfounded Apple-AMD speculation, but evidently this is one rumor with legs, because the fans simply refuse to let it die. The latest chapter in this ongoing saga surfaces in the form of an interview with Hector Ruiz, AMD's CEO, who talked to eWEEK about the future of 64-bit computing. As noted by MacNN, Ruiz flat out states that he's seen "no indication" that Apple is even considering AMD processors for the future of the Mac platform-- which one might think would further prove that the HammerMac proponents are just caught up in a pipe dream from which they refuse to awaken, right?

Wrong! You fail to underestimate the power of a persistent rumor, Grasshopper. While Ruiz himself states that the only thing he's heard about an Apple-AMD partnership is "rumors going around," he does acknowledge that at some point Apple is going to want to take the Mac to a 64-bit processing platform, and he astutely points out that Steve Jobs is about as likely to slap a hot, slow Itanium onto a Mac motherboard as he is to polish his teeth with an industrial belt-sander. That leaves Apple two alternatives: an AMD chip, or a 64-bit PowerPC processor. Pop quiz, kiddies! Given that IBM has already publicly released details about its 64-bit PowerPC 970, which of those two scenarios do you consider more likely?

But eWEEK pushes still further: "So they're not in talks with you, they're not evaluating the [AMD] chip as far as you know?" And this is where all hell breaks loose: Ruiz replies, "If they were I couldn't tell you, and if they're not I shouldn't tell you." In other words, folks, the CEO of AMD has gone on the record and denied the existence of even the most tentative beginnings of an Apple-AMD partnership-- but he didn't deny it vehemently, and as we all know, when it comes to rumors like this, heck, that's as good as a confirmation.

Look, there are actually people out there so bent on the Apple-AMD rumors that they're still trying to explain away the apparent miscapitalization of "Amd support" on a certain Jaguar features page. (As it turns out, there's no need, folks-- it's listed as "AMD support" on this page instead. Go wild.) Ruiz's "If I knew, I couldn't tell you" comments can only fuel that fire. What can we say? This is shaping up to be another "Disney's Buying Apple," with one notable exception: the Disney deal is really going to happen. Any day now. Seriously, we can feel it.