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Another aspect of Intel not working that closely with Apple (it this ARM transition happens) is that Apple is often seen as knowing what they are talking about
by xt00 6y ago
Another aspect of Intel not working that closely with Apple (it this ARM transition happens) is that Apple is often seen as knowing what they are talking about on deep technical issues (basically they have lots of really good engineers). So Intel will need to find other smart customers that they can work closely with to understand the consumers needs and what they should modify in their chips for the next gen.
- soperj 6y agoIs that why they dropped intel in the 90s?
- MengerSponge 6y agoApple didn't switch processor vendors in the 90's. They dropped Motorola/PowerPC in the 00's in favor of Intel's Core processors that were remarkably faster and more power efficient.
- monocasa 6y agoWell, they did swap processor architectures in the 90s too. 68k for powerpc.
- MengerSponge 6y agoOh yeah, my mistake. Motorola made both though, right?
- ultrarunner 6y agoKind of. MacOS had a 68k emulator built in so that the entire OS (and application base) wouldn't have to be ported to PPC. I learned this recently when I disassembled Bolo (Stuart Cheshire, I'm trying to get ahold of you!) and found m68k instructions. Early Apple stuff is fascinating.
- monocasa 6y agoThey had a PowerPC emulator on the switch to Intel too.
- baybal2 6y agoAnd they did it because IBM was not committed to laptop CPUs. Now similarly, they want to ditch Intel because they didn't commit to smartphone CPUs.
- danaris 6y agoThat was the later PowerPC -> Intel shift in the mid-2000s. The switch from 68k to PowerPC was because PowerPC was an extremely powerful up-and-coming architecture at the time. A PowerMac 7100 (one of the earliest models) blew a 68040 Mac out of the water.
- kalleboo 6y agoThe switch from 68k to PowerPC was because 68k was dead, Motorola was pushing the 88k which was already failing in the market, and while Apple also considered other architectures like SPARC, they didn't want to be tied to only a single company's fortunes again like they were with the 68k. So when IBM came to them asking "hey how about we scale down POWER to a desktop chip for you?" Apple also brought in Motorola so that they could dual-source their chips and not be dependent on one company, and PowerPC was born. Rather than being an up-and-coming competitor, PowerPC probably wouldn't exist without Apple's involvement (they would probably still have pursued a scaled-down POWER, but it wouldn't be PowerPC)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gfxgirl 6y agoI guess I forgot about Apple and Intel in the 90s? I thought it was Motorola (68k) -> IBM Power PC -> Intel (present). What was the 90s Intel + Apple thing?
- jjtheblunt 6y agoIBM Power + Motorola + Apple ---> PowerPC
- Spooky23 6y agoThat's a big problem, as PCs are mostly pure commodity with minimal engineering as the market stagnated.