But the radical ambition that drove A-series chips each year was justified by both iPad sales and iPhone sales, and eventually presented itself as an option and alternative to Intel. When did it figure that out? Probably not in 2010. Intel also wanted to get its x86 chips into iPad, but by that point Apple realized it could deliver its own customized ARM SoC and have one unified processor architecture for all of its iOS devices, and eventually build that into silicon it could use to power Macs. When Apple saw what Intel had with Core, it realized it could get a CPU for its MacBooks and eventually gain chips to replace the G5, even if it required a digression back into 32 bit CPUs for a period of time. It's own Pentium 4 had indeed reached a dead end in performance per watt. Intel meanwhile had acquired its new Core x86 architecture from research and development centered in Isreal. The real issue was that there simply wasn't any economies of scale or shipping volumes to justify either of those efforts. IBM could have kept going, and other PPC partners could have done the work to develop a more mobile friendly, power effecient chip for notebooks. And of course, it also informed the work to develop iOS on ARM.Īs others have noted, NeXT's work in parallel to move its NeXTSTEP OS and tools to PPC also contributed to the knowledge and experience that made its way to Apple as it completed its PPC transition and then moved to Intel (leveraging NeXT's work in x86 Apple's own "StarTrek" x86 work hadn't resulted in a shippable product).īy 2005, PowerPC hadn't really "reached a limit." G5 was fast and achieved a clean, shipping 64-bit architecture well in advance of Intel. It then notes that despite this, all the work that delivered the PowerPC transition was later applied to the Intel transition. The comment that "the difficulty of that transition and its unexpected result might suggest that in hindsight, it was ultimately a mistake to have attempted such a complex and risky task" isn't saying it was a mistake, it's an acknowledgment that in hindsight, it could appear that it was a mistake because it didn't work out as expected. ![]() It also worked with Acorn to develop a mobile chip (for Newton) that wouldn't have been powerful enough for the Mac. As I wrote earlier, Apple had attempted to develop its own silicon in the 80s and failed. Of course the transition to PPC was necessary, well intentioned and the best option at the time. Apple has done very well with the Intel Macs and it is amazing that the Intel Macs have outlasted both PowerPC and 680x0 Macs in longevity.at 14 years. But Apple shifting to their own processors allows them to release new hardware on their schedule, and not be dependent on Intel. The need to run Windows on Mac is still quite popular for running Windows as a VM on Mac, especially for developing software, so that might be a minor loss. Boot Camp and running Windows natively was just an added bonus. Apple knew the PowerPC was reaching its limit and had been planning for Intel years before the switch took place. All versions of OS X were 100% x86 native behind closed doors. Also, when Apple acquired NeXT, OpenStep was already x86 native. Remember, Apple could not make the products they wanted to make with the PowerPC roadmap. The Core Duo chips were far superior, and made the MacBook Pro run 5x faster than the G4. ![]() Intel, on the other hand, had the performance per watt and that is what Apple was looking for. IBM also could not produce any faster G5 chips for the desktop. The G5 ran too hot for any type of portable use, and it would actually run slower than a G4, if they managed to shoehorn it into a PowerBook chassis. The shift to Intel had nothing to do with compatibility. Remember the famous snail ad? That gave Apple a big boost, especially with the G3, G4, and G5. The PowerPC, on the other hand, offered huge performance boosts that were much faster than Intel at the time. The 68060 to replace the 68040 was not much faster and required a lot of re-writes to take advantage of it. The 680x0 architecture was going nowhere. The article implies that the switch to PowerPC was a bad move because no one else in the industry used PowerPC chips. The transition from 680x0 to PowerPC was a very good move.
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