Random access memories Macs get Intel inside (2006)

Apple’s M1 chip is the end of an era; here’s how it started

Macs get Intel inside? What did they have inside before Intel chips – potato chips?

Oh, you’re so young (and strange). But no: the first Macs had Motorola 68k processors. In 1994, these were replaced by Powerpc chips that were much faster; to hammer this message home, Apple ran an ad where a snail crawled slowly across the screen with a Pentium II strapped to its back, before a shot of a snazzy, speedy G3 Mac appeared. This didn’t age well: a few years later, Powerpc had stalled and Macs looked slothful – hence Apple making good with Intel. Poor Apple. How did it cope with making such a humiliating U-turn? This is Apple. The company is pragmatic, not sentimental: something is good (or bad) until it isn’t. So during his WWDC 2005 keynote, Steve Jobs made the Intel transition for 2006 seem like the most obvious thing Apple could do. He admitted Apple hadn’t delivered on the promise of 3GHZ Power Mac desktops and G5 laptops, then threw Powerpc under a bus by saying its roadmap wouldn’t enable amazing future Apple products because of its poor performance compared to Intel. Soon enough, Powerpc Macs were history.

Still, all’s well that ends well – Intel and Apple, friends forever!

Not quite, because tech history has a habit of repeating itself. Just as Apple once felt held back by 68k and Powerpc, the same happened with Intel – hence the 2020 reveal of Apple’s own M1 chip. Sceptics scoffed… but were silenced as soon as they used M1 Macs that embarrassed their Intel predecessors. So, with Apple thrice burned by reliance on others, history surely won’t repeat in the same way again: the next time Macs are due for a brain upgrade, Apple will be in control of its own fortunes.