June 6, 2005: Steve Jobs says Apple switching to Intel & dashing hopes for G5 Powerbook

[pRICE cUBE]

NOPE!



https://www.cultofmac.com/484394/apple-i...r-powerpc/

June 6, 2005: Steve Jobs reveals that Apple is switching the Mac from PowerPC processors to Intel.

Speaking at that year’s WWDC, Jobs’ revelation reminds us that he is a CEO who can get things done. Given Intel’s focus on mobile computing, it also offers a hint at what Apple’s CEO has planned for the second half of his reign.

Standing onstage at WWDC 2005, Jobs talked about PowerPC processors’ limits. Previously, Apple only attempted changing CPU architecture once before. (It switched from the Motorola 68000 to PowerPC in the early 1990s.)

Going with Intel chips was a risky move for a tech company. In fact, it had been enough to topple other computer makers, such as one-time Apple rivals Commodore and Atari. However, as Jobs explained, Apple could not deliver on its vision without making the change.

“I stood up here two years ago in front of you and I promised you [a 3GHz Power Macintosh G5], and we haven’t been able to deliver that to you yet,” he said. “I think a lot of you would like a G5 in your PowerBook and we haven’t been able to deliver that to you yet…. As we look ahead, though we may have great products right now — and we’ve got some great PowerPC product still yet to come — as we look ahead we can envision some amazing products we want to build for you and we don’t know how to build them with the future PowerPC road map.”

[Speedy]

Yep, the AIM consortium fell apart because not all the companies could pull their share of the weight.

[Racer X]

P P P P P P Powerbook!

[JoeH]

Speedy wrote:
Yep, the AIM consortium fell apart because not all the companies could pull their share of the weight.

Two members of the consortium were burned by a decision made by the third. One of those burned members took a loss of 10s of million dollars, and made it clear years before that their concentration going forward on PowerPC chip development was for the embedded market.

[Will Collier]

Racer X wrote:
P P P P P P Powerbook!

That was so great.

[Rolando]

Weren't the Xbox 360 and PS3 PPC? And they outsold Apple 10 to 1. I wonder if Apple could have used those chips?

[S. Pupp]

Good timing: I was just reading earlier this week the MacWorld issues that discussed the switch to Intel.

[JoeH]

Rolando wrote:
Weren't the Xbox 360 and PS3 PPC? And they outsold Apple 10 to 1. I wonder if Apple could have used those chips?

PS3 Cell processor was based on PPC, but was specialized for the processing of video/image type data. The core was a general purpose processor with 8 specialized coprocessors surrounding it. As the Cell was designed for a consortium that included Sony and Toshiba and came out a year after Apple had made the decision to switch to Intel, it would not have been available to Apple. The specialized design elements also probably would not have been suitable for use in a Mac.

For much of the same reasons the Xenon chip designed for MS to use in the Xbox 360 would not have been usable by Apple. The chip used 3 cores modified from the design for the central core of the Cell. First shipments were at the end of 2005.

Neither of these chips were very low powered. Early generation PS3 models had a 380 W PS, while the Xbox 360 needed one just over 200 W. A large fraction of that power was for the processors.

[Lew Zealand]

It was clearly the best Mac decision for Apple as the Core Duo offered way more performance than even the G5 and immediately could be used in both desktops and laptops, achieving parity in one decision. Core 2 Duo extended that lead less than year later and Core i# 2 years after that. Huge leaps in performance which was unavailable from the PPC side of things.

Apple should consider adding AMD Ryzen CPUs nowadays but they'll probably go with their own A# chips in the long run.

[AllGold]

I would have been disappointed if this post did not include the spoof picture of the "G5 Powerbook".