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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Steve Jobs wanted to move Apple to Intel chips five years ago

In a recent CNET interview, Freescale CEO Michel Mayer reveals that Apple CEO Steve Jobs wanted to move Macs to Intel microprocessors five years ago:

In my previous job, I ran IBM's semiconductor business. So I've seen both sides of the Apple story, because I sold the G5 to Steve (Jobs) the first time he wanted to move to Intel.

Five years ago?

Mayer: Yeah, that's about right. So I sold the G5. First I told IBM that we needed to do it, and then I sold it to Apple that the G5 was good and it was going to be the follow-on of the PowerPC road map for the desktop. It worked pretty well. And then IBM decided not to take the G5 into the laptop and decided to really focus its chip business on the game consoles.

So what's most interesting about this? Two things: First, that in the intervening time, Apple has spent a considerable effort to "explain" to people how much better the Power PC G5 chip was than Intel chips, even though, ahem, it wasn't. Ah well, at least they eventually got it right.

Second, it was IBM that decided not to pursue laptop G5 chips, effectively leaving Apple hanging.

[ Posted at 7:55 PM | Permalink ]