Semiconductor History | Moscone West, 6 June 2005 — Apple Gives Intel the Mac
· 2005-6
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Semiconductor History | Moscone West, 6 June 2005 — Apple Gives Intel the Mac
kevin
This 20-inch iMac was photographed in February 2006, one month after Apple shipped its first Intel-based iMac. From the outside it looked much like its PowerPC predecessor; the disruptive change was behind the white enclosure.
At Moscone West on 6 June 2005, Steve Jobs told more than 3,800 developers that Apple would move the Macintosh from PowerPC to Intel processors. Apple planned to begin selling Intel Macs within a year and complete the transition by the end of 2007.
The announcement solved a product-roadmap problem.
Apple had not delivered the promised three-gigahertz Power Mac G5, and IBM’s processors could not give its notebooks the performance and heat balance Apple wanted. Intel’s coming mobile processors offered a stronger performance-per-watt path, while the x86 supply chain could support a far broader range of computers.
Apple prepared unusually well for the break.
Jobs demonstrated Mac OS X Tiger on an Intel system and revealed that Apple had maintained an x86 build for years. Developers could rent a $999 transition kit and compile “universal” applications for both architectures; Rosetta translated many existing PowerPC programs while native versions caught up.
The good arrived quickly.
Apple introduced Intel-based iMac and MacBook Pro models in January 2006 and said the whole product line had completed the move by that August, far ahead of schedule. A shared x86 architecture also made Boot Camp possible, letting a Mac start Windows XP directly and reducing a practical barrier for people who needed Windows software.
The transition still imposed a private tax on users and developers.
Universal binaries took engineering and testing, Rosetta could not translate every application or driver, and recently purchased PowerPC Macs acquired an early expiration date. Apple also exchanged dependence on IBM’s roadmap for dependence on Intel’s, a bargain that worked well for years but did not give Apple control over the processor’s pace or priorities.
That limitation became clear when Apple announced another architecture transition in 2020, this time to its own silicon. Intel’s Mac win was major and deserved: it enabled faster notebooks, broad compatibility, and one of the smoothest platform migrations in personal computing.
It was also temporary because the customer ultimately wanted integration that an outside processor supplier could not provide.
The pin marks Moscone Center West, where the WWDC 2005 keynote took place. Access depends on the convention schedule.
The photographed Core Duo iMac is an early 2006 product created by the decision announced there, not the development system shown onstage.
Photo: Kevin Ballard, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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