> My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of innovation. Before Apple announced their Intel trans

> My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of innovation. Before Apple announced their Intel transition laptops were more than half of their Mac sales. Of their desktop sales, the iMac dominated over PowerMacs. So a majority of the systems they were selling had relatively tight thermal envelopes. Neither IBM nor Motorola was willing (or able) to get computing power equivalent to x86 into those thermal envelopes. The G5 was a derivative of IBM's POWER chips they put in servers and workstations. They were largely unconcerned with thermals. Motorola saw the embedded space as more profitable and didn't want to invest in the G4 to make it more competitive. Meanwhile Intel had introduced the Pentium III derived Core series chips. Good thermals, high performance, multiple cores, and 64-bit. It was better performance than Apple's G5 in the thermal envelope of the G4. Neither IBM or Motorola had general issues with production volume. Apple switching was all about the future direction of the architecture. There was no market for desktop PowerPC chips besides Apple. Neither IBM or Motorola really wanted to compete directly with Intel and saw their fortunes in other segments. So Apple went with Intel because they were making chips compatible with what Apple wanted to do with the Mac. The first Intel Macs ran circles around the PowerPC machines they replaced with no major sacrifices needed in thermals or battery life. So Intel innovation in the 00s got Apple to switch to them and a lack thereof got them to switch away again.