allenbaum

There was an AMD 29000 Macintosh. But Apple execs were afraid that would piss off Motorola too much, and they still needed their parts. So then there was an 88k Macintosh. Execs decided that Moro didn’t have the volume to compete with Intel, so they put them together with IBM to form AIM and develop PPC (they considered HPs Precision RISC as well) and went with that until it was clear even those two couldn’t keep up with Intel- or with Apples direction.

I’m actually one of the architects of this processor. The story that I tell wasn’t so much that they were at the point of needing to spend real money, but it was pointed out that to compete with Intel/Motorola they would have to pay for development over and over- and the couldn’t afford (then) to spend the money to do that.

Ironically, that decision led (pretty much directly) to the formation of ARM (and PowerPC, of course)