Jon Stokes on Next-Gen ARM CPUs, and Apple’s Switch to Intel

Jon Stokes:

Years ago, I heard the back-story on Apple’s switch to Intel first-hand from some folks on the IBM side of things, and what I learned was that Steve Jobs agonized over this decision and waited until the morning of the keynote before pulling the trigger on this move. He actually went into that day with two keynote presentations prepared: one for a PowerPC-based product line, and one for The Switch. When he pulled out The Switch presentation, the IBM team was absolutely as stunned as the rest of the world, as was the P.A. Semi team who had been separately assured by Jobs that their dual-core PowerPC part would find its way into Apple portables.

I believe it, but this sort of conflicts with reporting by CNet and The Wall Street Journal — both of which reported Apple’s surprise switch to Intel for the Mac a few days before the WWDC keynote. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Apple “decided” to switch to Intel a few days before WWDC, but that nothing had been signed in ink until the morning of the keynote.

Anyway, good stuff on next-gen ARM technology, as usual from Stokes.

★ Friday, 21 October 2011