Why Apple stayed with PPC so long!

[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:

[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.