Even the ex CEO of Apple admited that motorola was a mistake.

[SIR-GERMAN]

This is an interesting interview with the ex CEO of Apple , makes you  wander  about  Amiga  .




"I made two really dumb mistakes that I really regret because I think they would have made a difference to Apple. One was when we are at the end of the life of the Motorola processor… we took two of our best technologists and put them on a team to go look and recommend what we ought to do.

They came back and they said it doesn’t make any difference which  RISC architecture you pick, just pick the one that you think you can get the best business deal with. But don’t use  CISC. SISC is complex instructions set. RISC is reduced instruction set.

So Intel lobbied heavily to get us to stay with them… (but) we went with IBM and Motorola with the PowerPC. And that was a terrible decision in hindsight. If we could have worked with Intel, we would have gotten onto a more commoditized component platform for Apple, which would have made a huge difference for Apple during the 1990s. In the 1990s, the processors were getting powerful enough that you could run all of your technology and software, and that’s when Microsoft took off with their Windows 3.1.

Prior to that you had to do it in software and hardware, the way Apple did. When the processors became powerful enough, it just became a commodity and the software can handle all those subroutines we had to do in hardware.

So we totally missed the boat. Intel would spend 11 billion dollars and evolve the Intel processor to do graphics… and it was a terrible technical decision. I wasn’t technically qualified, unfortunately, so I went along with the recommendation."

http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/63295

[agami]

Ah, the beauty of hindsight. Nowhere near as challenging as its cousin foresight.Back then, when I'd try to look this far foward, what I'd see is very different to what is here today. Just as different as the things I confronted then, to the way I remember them, I'd say.

[divined]

I wouldn`t regard it a mistake. Especially, back then PPC seemed to offer much more potential than the x86 platform. It was a clear cut RISC architecture.

Intel went to a lot of strains just to include some RISC functionality into it`s processors while maintaining compatibility. I believe that the demise of the PPC platform was more a matter of scale then anything else.

[spirantho]

If he were techincally-orientated, then he would know why they went with PowerPC, though.

I don't know the facts, but I would guess the endianness of the PowerPC architecture had a lot to do with the choice to go that route. These days it's less of a problem, but in those days they needed all the power they could get, so byte-swapping would have slowed down legacy compatibility too much.

Hindsight is always 20/20 vision.

[clusteruk]

Without sounding like I am crowing, I tried to get Commodore then Gateway to x86 with Siamese and then PCI Amiga. Commodore would not listen and Gateway dumped the PCI Amiga project.

Trouble was, the technical software guys who talked about the beauty of the PPC missed the point, x86 had Intel behind it and was only going to get way better.

Still we are on x86 now, we just lack the Amiga badge for now.

[Templario]

A bad decission choosed PPC CPUs? if they choose at first the Intel family they neither have been the same level that Microsoft, pay more for one Apple with Intel? when a single and clone PC is more cheap that one MAC, the people there were done as currently buy a PC clone with Intel and install the MAC OS with the patched, the sucessful of MAC was the different  with the PC clones and Windos, because its prices always have been and are very exapensives, very exclusives, having the MACs 68k, PPC or Intels.

[Lando]

The man is an idiot, and is just saying this now, after Intel has come out on top.  You can bet that, if PPC had triumphed over Intel, this same man would be crowing about PPC was his own personal recommendation.

Back then, RISC, and PPC was by far the best choice for the future, was faster, more modern, based on he best technology, that is why the team of experts Apple put to investigate future recommended it.

Much of what he says doesn't even make sense

1990's, the processors were getting powerful enough that you could run all of your technology and software

What? So, before 1990 your processor couldn't run your software?  Or they could run your software but not your technology?  My Mac still doesn't run my technology even in 2010.  Runs my software fine, though.

So we totally missed the boat. Intel would spend 11 billion dollars and evolve the Intel processor to do graphics…

What an absolute tool.
It's only now, with the Core i7 series.. that Intel processors have began having built-in GPU, and, like every Intel GPU before it, is abysmal in performance.  This has no relevance whatsoever to a decision 20 years ago.

[ElPolloDiabl]

But now games (at least) are developed for Power PC console, but snub the x86 PC.

[kolla]

Let's not forget what killed the PowerPC in the first place

[Tension]

The guy's an idiot. Parents are probably idiots too.

[VingtTrois]

The guy's an idiot. Parents are probably idiots too.

I confirm that his parents are idiot too :biglaugh: (perhaps also his grandparents!:hat:)

[Matt_H]

From my perspective, x86 chips didn't actually get "good" until 4 or 5 years ago. Before that, they were power-sucking, hot, and inefficient across the entire range. AMD was a bit better than Intel, but PPC seemed to offer better performance per clock cycle while using the least electricity.

Now, however, x86 has strong multicore architecture and a good product range that encompasses the powerful and the power-efficient.

Whether this is due to a business relationship with Apple is impossible to say, but I think Apple's decision to switch has been fully vindicated.

(Which does make me a tiny bit sad because I do have a soft spot for PPC)

[B00tDisk]

Ah the frantic shrieking of the cult of PPC

[dammy]

Yup, hinesight is 20/20, and his is spot on.  Intel was the big desktop CPU maker and they should have hitched their wagons to it and not to IBM/Mot with their history of delayed CPU releases.  Five years later when AMD hit the market with the K-5s would have been the best time to switched to Intels and use the threat of using AMD as a way to beat down Intel's pricing.  Might have been a different OS landscape had Apple gone Intel.  Piracy is what gave M$ the upper hand in the desktop market, it might have been kind to Apple as well had there been a chance to bring Apple into more offices around the world as the computer revolution took root.

[commodorejohn]

Sculley doesn't know shit about the computer industry, and didn't back then, either; he was responsible for the deal that gave Microsoft a perpetual license to the Macintosh UI, one of the principle reasons that Windows even got to stay on the market, and was a driving force behind Apple's policy of absurdly-priced computers for the elite when the PC clonemakers were busy saturating the market with comparatively affordable machines, leading them into the rut they spent half of the '90s in. As for this nugget of "wisdom," while I'm not really a PPC fan, it was definitely the better choice at the time, even if it didn't work out so well in the long run. Moving to the 386 and 486 Intel chips of the time would have meant even worse emulation compatibility than the first PPC Macs offered, and given that the Mac's userbase was all about software, that would have been complete suicide.