> during a talk a Freescale guy used Apple's switch as the reason for putting it on hold.

Yes, I've known that story from you.

> I akways thought it was just the successor of the e600 with Altivec.

Me too. That's why I'm so astonished by what the Wikipedia articles say in that regard.

> somewhere in the back of my mind I think I heard of Altivec being part of the e700 core.

I thought so too. But maybe you and me were just implying that by assuming it would be derived from e600? Otherwise I'd find it odd that I can't chase down an (official) online document explicitly stating AltiVec as an e700 feature.

> Maybe after Apple left and Freescale saw teh network communication as their new
> major target they decided to make the e700 a Altivec-less core which then could
> better get derived from the e500. Since teh e700 was mostly paper work at that time,
> I think it is pretty possible, that Freescale just changed the basics of the e700.

Interesting thought :-)