Why Apple stayed with PPC so long!

[persia]

CNN posted this video story yesterday that explains why Apple avoided Intel for so long.  It appears that when Steve Jobs was just starting up making computers in the garage he approached Andrew Grove for a discount on memory.  Andrew responded that they give discounts to large orders not to small companies like yours.  You are a nobody, why should I give you a discount.  That apparently stuck with Steve Jobs for a long time and that's why he went with IBM and PPC instead of Intel.  

So the who Intel versus PPC debate was not about endian-ness or features, it was about a bruised ego...

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2009/11/05/tm_steve_jobs_apple_ceo.fortune/

[dammy]

CNN posted this video story yesterday that explains why Apple avoided Intel for so long.  It appears that when Steve Jobs was just starting up making computers in the garage he approached Andrew Grove for a discount on memory.  Andrew responded that they give discounts to large orders not to small companies like yours.  You are a nobody, why should I give you a discount.  That apparently stuck with Steve Jobs for a long time and that's why he went with IBM and PPC instead of Intel.  

So the who Intel versus PPC debate was not about endian-ness or features, it was about a bruised ego...

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2009/11/05/tm_steve_jobs_apple_ceo.fortune/

Yup, that sounds like Jobs' ego alright.  As  a former Apple][+ owner, I have deep respect for Woz, and contempt for Jobs.

[save2600]

I'd say that was a good enough reason to avoid Intel. Screw 'em! Not only that, but there are those of us who still value choice. The PPC lineup made their computers unique - just as they did with the ST's and Amiga's. I wish IBM and Motorola were still producing chips in an evolutionary way for mainstream computers. Lack of choice is not good. It's what's ruining this and other countries.

Oh, and I remember reading in my MacWorld's that Apple went with Intel originally because IBM couldn't cost effectively produce a small enough/heat & energy enough efficient chip for their laptops beyond the G4 line...

[jj]

Well intel get massively fined by the Europe and are now being taken to court in the US for giving people money to only use their chips, and increasding prices for people who used AMD as well

[Tripitaka]

I don't buy Intel, haven't done for a good few years. AMD chips tend to give more bang per buck and run cooler. Sure Intel may have the edge at the top end but I don't buy top-end chips, they are beyond the range of my wallet and seldom give anything close to value for money.

[persia]

Steve Jobs was named CEO of the decade by Money Magazine.  He took a company on the ropes, worth about 5 billion and turned it into an industry leader worth 40 times that.  But I think they're also right, the '00s were the decade of Apple, but the '10s will be the decade of Google.  Android has a better chance to catch the big three (Symbian, Apple and RIM) than anyone else....

[Tension]

Steve Jobs was named CEO of the decade by Money Magazine.  He took a company on the ropes, worth about 5 billion and turned it into an industry leader worth 40 times that.  But I think they're also right, the '00s were the decade of Apple, but the '10s will be the decade of Google.  Android has a better chance to catch the big three (Symbian, Apple and RIM) than anyone else....

And what did the Amiga assets go for after Commodore?  About $14 million or so??  Pffft!!

[utri007]

One reason why apple moved away from ppc was that they heard sony/nintedo/Microsoft plans to use ppc cpus in their consoles.

Apple has had big problems to get enough ppc cpus from motorola/ibm

[DiskDoctor]

@persia

I have similar story with an IBM representative.

Sounds a good reason to me for Apple to stay off Intel.  Some companies pretending to be something, should really hire people more carefully...

[amigadave]

One reason why apple moved away from ppc was that they heard sony/nintedo/Microsoft plans to use ppc cpus in their consoles.

Apple has had big problems to get enough ppc cpus from motorola/ibm

That might have been about 2% of the reason to go toward using Intel CPU's and I think Steve Jobs bruised ego probably had some small part for Apple going from 68k to PPC, instead of making the switch to Intel back then, but it seems pretty obvious that the reasons for Apple staying with PPC as long as they did, was the amount of work it took to switch to x86 plus the lack of performance, or performance and heat generated differences gap that was continuing to widen between PPC and x86 CPU's.

Jobs had MacOSX running on Intel x86 long before he released it to the public, he just waited for the right marketing moment to make the switch.  The worst thing he could have done would be to release it prematurely without third party software support and less performance due to MacOSX not being completely ready and able to do everything better on Intel than on the G5 PPC.  Apple could not afford a "so-so" reception to that switch, as Jobs already knew that many of the users would be resistant, just as many Amiga users still let their feelings get in the way of purchasing Intel CPU's for any of their PC's.

I think to take this video comment about why one Intel exec thinks it took so long for Apple to make the switch seriously is laughable.  Where was Jobs before he came back to Apple?  What CPU's did the NeXT system run on?  Maybe I should go check, but IIRC the NeXT switched to Intel x86 before Apple did, or did the NeXT start out on x86?  I don't know, because it was never something I was interested in.

If it is entertaining to keep speculating on what OTHER reasons Apple finally switched to x86 and Intel, go ahead and continue making these .......... well let's just say they are unsubstantiated opinions.

:laughing:

[persia]

NeXT started with Motorola chips and made the decision in 1992 to go to Intel rather than IBM (PPC).  This is probably the point at which Steve Jobs forgave Grove, in '97 Jobs took over an Apple entrenched in IBM chips.  9 Years later the IBM chips were eliminated.  There is every indication that OS X was Intel ready from the beginning.

But it was a long process.  He had to get OS X off the ground and wean people off classic before the switch could be made.

[amigadave]

NeXT started with Motorola chips and made the decision in 1992 to go to Intel rather than IBM (PPC).  This is probably the point at which Steve Jobs forgave Grove, in '97 Jobs took over an Apple entrenched in IBM chips.  9 Years later the IBM chips were eliminated.  There is every indication that OS X was Intel ready from the beginning.

But it was a long process.  He had to get OS X off the ground and wean people off classic before the switch could be made.

I just finished reading an excellent wiki on the NeXT companies and history.  I think most of the guesses I made in my first post in this thread were confirmed in that wiki and I would agree with persia's statement above.

I think Jobs was long over the memory chip discount grudge with Intel before Apple made the switch to x86 publicly.

[bloodline]

Steve Jobs had planned to get the Mac to nice cheap x86 CPUs since the introduction MacOS X. But the problem was Mac Classic software, he had to get OSX established before any transition could occur, also x86 speeds needed to be there to allow invisible PPC emulation.

[utri007]

Problems to get enough ppc cpus is only 100% fact we know, all the other reasons can be considered as a advertaising speech, more or less.

I'm not trying to say anything about how big reason it was but I'm sceptical for other reasons.

I of the biggest reason, I belive is that Mac Os was old and it would needed to completely rewriten to get all fancy moden features to it, and of course difficult. Result would have been broken compatibility and still needed to rewrite all applications, wich is not big difference to current situation. In the other hand they had already bought modern x86 and so they decided that it would be more economical way move on.

It would have been stupid to say: "we are moving to intel because we have problems to get cpus to our computer" or "We don't want to spend our money to develop modern Os from scratch"

[toRus]

Actually, Apple stayed with PPC because PPC was better than Intel/AMD/Cyrix chips. And at the time that really mattered. MacOSX might have been developed x86 compatible before the 2005 Intel transition/regression but mainly because "it could be done" rather than the superiority of the technology. The performance benefits came long after the G5 was introduced and the PPC project was abandoned. Apple have chosen their companion and has stayed loyal up to now. This offered many opportunities but also had many risks. Apple simply wanted out of the CPU business and motherboard design. Time (not just 5-10 years) will tell whether this was a wise decision.