For Apple, the word Silicon is a key that opens the door to a new era, and at the same time it is a curse, making it embarrassed several times, from top product manager Steve Jobs to supply chain guru Cook, either doing self-developed chips or on the way to ponder chips.
A chip with an area of no more than a few square centimeters and a weight of no more than a few grams runs through Apple, the strongest company on the surface, and determines its fate in the desktop and mobile markets.
From Motorola to IBM, to Intel, and finally back to ARM, from CISC to RISC, and then to enable CISC again, and finally back to RISC, Apple, which has repeatedly jumped for decades, has become a veritable "three-surnamed family slave", and switching between multiple platform architectures has become the norm in Apple's hardware department, making countless engineers and programmers whiteheaded.
In most cases, Apple's replacement platform is a wise choice, in the case of macOS ecology tends to be stable, a processor with stronger performance and lower power consumption can undoubtedly drive everyone's replacement demand, just like the M series chip launched at the end of 2020, directly driving Apple's MacBook sales in the first quarter of 2021 to rise by 94%, which has put a shot in the arm for Apple's computer business.
But Apple's chip exploration is not always smooth, stumbling is frequent, and it even took more than a decade to draw a complete failure.
It's a storm
First of all, the birth of Apple and the development of chips are inseparable from the connection.
In 1975, Steve Wozniak hand-built a personal computer with a MOS 6502 processor in Hewlett-Packard's office, and Steve Jobs saw the business opportunity, pulled another partner, and co-founded Apple in 1976, and the first product was this hand-built computer - Apple I.
In 1977, Apple officially launched the Apple II, which was the first personal computer with a color graphic display, which was also equipped with a MOS 6502 processor, a processor frequency of 1MHz, priced at $1295, Apple II with excellent scalability and ease of use, a great success around the world, into thousands of households.
Of course, not only the Apple II., but also Commodore's PET, and RadioShack's TRS-80, these three personal computers launched in the late 70s, popular throughout the 80s, known as the 8-bit computer three.
Although they differ in specific configurations, they all use the same processor - MOS 6502, which is based on the Motorola 6800 processor, but the price is less than one-sixth, and the price is not only Apple, Commodore and other computer manufacturers, but also Atari and Nintendo's home game consoles, choosing to carry MOS 6502 or compatible versions, which together led to the personal computer revolution in the early 80s.
It can be said that the MOS 6502, which cost only $25 at the time, brought a wave in the late 70s, which was not only a revolution in computers, but also a revolution in semiconductor chips, and Apple was one of the lucky trendsetters.
As the largest computer manufacturer at that time, the "blue giant" IBM could not ignore the changes in this emerging market, in order to cope with the rapid development of personal computers such as Apple II, IBM launched the program code-named "Project Chess" internally, and in order to reduce internal constraints and quickly seize the market, the IBM development team took local materials and directly applied ready-made processors and systems in the market to develop IBM PCs.
After more than 1 year of preparation, on August 12, 1981, IBM's first PC, IBM 5150, was officially launched, which was equipped with Intel 8088 processor, using Microsoft's DOS 1.0 operating system, and the 64K memory version cost $1565.
Unlike all previous computer manufacturers, IBM did not keep the PC design secret, but produced detailed instructions, IBM PC was sold with a technical reference manual, IBM also claimed that any ordinary consumer can "learn to use the computer in a few hours", good ease of use and open technical attitude attracted more ordinary home users to buy.
IBM PCs were in short supply as soon as they went on the market, sales were 800% higher than IBM's expectations, monthly shipments were as high as 40,000 units, in 1983 alone, IBM sold more than 750,000 PCs, and in 1984, IBM's revenue in the PC market reached $400 million, more than double Apple's.
However, this practice of applying existing hardware and opening up related technologies soon exposed shortcomings, other manufacturers reverse-analyzed the BIOS program, and a large number of non-infringing imitations quickly appeared in the market, such as the responsive Columbia Data Products, which introduced the first imitation of the IBM PC, the MPC 1600-1, in 1982.
In order to regain its own market, IBM launched its own second-generation personal computer PS/2 in 1987, upgrading the new microchannel architecture bus standard, not only incompatible with the previous IBM PC, other manufacturers need to pay additional usage fees for each PS/2 computer, and even the production of old IBM PCs also has to pay a fee.
This of course aroused the dissatisfaction of other PC manufacturers, and the alliance of personal computer manufacturing companies led by Compaq no longer obeyed the blue giant, but announced a set of bus standards that extended the industry-standard architecture, and a large number of manufacturers began to produce IBM compatible machines that could be backward compatible, and by the late 80s, a large number of IBM compatible machines replaced IBM as the mainstream of the market, and the PC market gradually turned into an open market instead of IBM's words.
IBM no longer controlled the voice of the PC, and in the early 90s, Intel, which made the processor, and Microsoft, which developed the system, became the de facto dominant player in the PC market, and the Wintel Alliance was born.
Perhaps at this time, some people will wonder, where is the first apple to eat the crab of the personal computer market?
Throughout the 80s, Apple's presence was not low, after the success of Apple II, Apple has appeared three completely different personal computer projects, namely Apple III., Lisa and Macintosh, as the founder of Jobs in the Apple III and Lisa project after successive problems, finally devoted to the Macintosh project.
After several years of development, in 1984, Apple officially launched the Macintosh 128K, equipped with a Motorola 68000 processor, a simple beige appearance with a keyboard and mouse, a new graphical user interface, exquisite integrated design... Many ingenuity made the Macintosh the most eye-catching scenery of the year, and compared with the popular IBM PC at that time, the Macintosh is undoubtedly closer to the personal computer we know today.
However, the Macintosh 128K due to its small memory, resulting in many software can not be developed and used normally, and the fanless design has also earned it a reputation - "beige toaster", and Apple has also remedy it later, such as introducing the Macintosh 512K and external floppy disk drives and so on.
Compared with the previous IBM, Apple is like the other side of the coin, it has adopted a completely closed strategy on the Macintosh, except that the processor is from Motorola, the production and operating system are completed by Apple itself, firmly grasping the entire Macintosh ecology in its own hands, which is not only Jobs' idea, but also the consensus of many Apple employees.
This also led to Apple, although Apple has such an epoch-making product as the Macintosh was born, but also has a relatively rich ecology, but with the rising star IBM PC, in the competition, never prevailed, Apple II and Macintosh once occupied about 25% of the personal computer market share in the mid-80s, but over time, Apple's sales are increasing, occupying a shrinking market share.
Although Jobs, Macintosh's hero, left Apple as early as 1985, Apple's top management, led by CEO Sculley, did not sit still, and they were brewing a counterattack.
Vertical and horizontal
During the Warring States period, although there were seven relatively powerful countries, Qi, Qin, Yan, Zhao, Wei, Han, and Chu, after a series of reforms such as the Shang Martingale Reform Law, the Qin State jumped into the most powerful country in one fell swoop, and in this context, the academic school of Zonghengjia was born.
The so-called vertical and horizontal, divided into vertical and horizontal, combined vertical is a number of weak countries united to resist the strong country, so as to prevent being annexed, and Lian Heng, on the contrary, is the weak country dependent on the strong country, to attack another weak country, in order to achieve the purpose of annexation and territorial expansion, the vertical and horizontal families shine in the seven heroes of the Warring States, Su Qin wears the seal of the six countries, so that Qin does not come out of the Hangu Pass, Zhang Yi breaks the "vertical" with "horizontal" and clears the obstacles to unification.
In the PC market in the 90s, the doctrine of vertical and horizontal once again appeared on the stage.
In the aforementioned personal computer market, three companies played a very important role, namely Apple, which opened the personal computer precedent, Motorola, which provided processor support for Apple II, Macintosh and other computers, and IBM, which contributed to the prosperity of personal computers, although they were all proud in the 80s, but in the early 90s, they all became frustrated, the PC market was booming, Microsoft and Intel could eat meat in large chunks, and these three could only drink soup.
The Wintel alliance represents the most powerful Qin state, and Apple, IBM, Motorola and other PC manufacturers are already weak countries, most PC manufacturers have turned to Wintel, chose the road of Lianheng, and Intel and Microsoft to develop the x86 market, and Apple, IBM and Motorola eventually went to the merger, the three united to resist Wintel.
In fact, since the beginning of Macintosh, Apple has been using Motorola's processor, Motorola's 68K series processor, has become the biggest driving force for Apple computers, but in the long-term cooperation process, Apple executives also recognize the risk of relying on a single supplier, just at this time Motorola's 68040 processor has been in a comprehensive backward state, unable to compete with the Intel Pentium series, it is imperative to replace the processor.
And what about Apple and IBM? For example, in recent years, the two companies have been working together to develop enterprise applications and promote iOS devices to enterprise customers, but at this point in the early 90s, it is simply inconceivable that Apple and IBM will cooperate together.
On the occasion of the release of the IBM PC in 1981, Apple put a full-page "warmly welcome IBM" advertisement in the magazine, in addition to the harsh irony of the belated IBM, when the Macintosh was launched in 1984, Apple put a "1984" advertisement on TV, and Apple became a freedom fighter who resisted, and with a swing of the hammer, it brought down the corporate giant that represented totalitarianism - IBM.
In layman's terms, two companies before the '90s couldn't pee in a pot: IBM was Big Blue, a conservative and pragmatic bastion of tradition, IBM's days off meant employees might take off their coats and reveal the white shirts they wore underneath, while Apple was founded by two counterculture long-haired youths, and its campus looked more like a rock festival in Woodstock than Wall Street; IBM talks about enterprise integration and system interoperability, Apple chatters about changing the world; IBM would play classical music played by Lawrence Welk on the accordion, but Apple employees preferred the Beatles' new album.
But it was two very different companies that ended up standing together. On July 3, 1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent for future alliances outlining the long-term strategic technical goals of the two collaborations to create a unified open computing platform for the entire industry, consisting of a new hardware design and next-generation operating system.
The so-called new hardware design is the Power that IBM has developed for several years, and the operating system, naturally, is the new system that Apple is developing, of course, Apple has not forgotten its old friend Motorola, and it is also good at producing processors, and the three companies that were previously competitors finally shook hands under market pressure, and the AIM Alliance was established.
The news caused a sensation as soon as it was announced, and MacWorld magazine reported at the time: This year, the earth shook, IBM and Apple shook hands and announced that they were allies.
Interestingly, Apple and IBM had many secret meetings before reaching a letter of intent, and around February 1991, in an IBM Texas office, the two senior executives met for the first time, considering IBM's conservative nature, Apple people uncharacteristically, wearing a suit and three-piece to the appointment, when they opened the door, they found that the IBM executives with the same idea as them, wearing jeans and denim shirts waiting in their seats, quite dramatic.
The reason for the cooperation between the two companies, of course, is external pressure from Wintel, the so-called enemy of the enemy is a friend, the phrase is appropriate here, but the deeper reason is that after Apple left Jobs in 1985, the new CEO Sculley considered products more from a commercial level, which led to Apple becoming more and more like a pure software service provider, although a large number of hardware continues to be launched, but they are becoming more and more mediocre in the market, from this point of view, Apple seems to have become the person he hated the most, and the dragon slayer boy walked step by step to the abyss of becoming a dragon.
While IBM has suffered setbacks in the consumer market, the blue giant is gradually not confident in itself, on the one hand, it knows that it is behind the times, but the arrogance of large enterprises makes it impossible to accept the fact flatly, IBM urgently needs a partner with appeal in the mass PC market, and the gradually declining Apple has become the best target.
In 1992, Apple and IBM formed two companies, Taligent and Kaleida, the former focusing on the operating system code-named Pink that Apple had been secretly developing since 1988, the main purpose of which was to officially bring this cross-platform operating system and application framework to market, and the latter to create a cross-platform scripting language on which developers could develop applications for the Power platform.
It can be said that at this point in 1992, the AIM Alliance outlined an incomparably beautiful vision for the world.
In fact, the market at that time was full of the view that CISC (complex instruction set) was outdated, RISC (reduced instruction set) was the way of the future, and x86 processors like Intel would sooner or later be thrown into the dustbin of history.
Why is this view? The reason is that the mainstream processor in the seventies and eighties, that is, CISC, often by increasing the complexity of hardware to enhance computer performance, in order to facilitate software programming convenience and improve the speed of program operation, engineers use the method is to increase the number of instructions that can achieve complex functions and a variety of flexible addressing methods, eventually leading to more and more complex hardware, the cost is also increasing.
And many people have doubts about the above development route, is more and more instructions really beneficial to the development of computers in the future? Many companies and institutions, including IBM, found that although CISC contains hundreds of instructions, the usage rate of various instructions varies greatly, 80% of the instructions used in the operation process of a program only accounts for 20% of the processor instruction system, and the concept of RISC (reduced instruction set) was proposed, which requires that the instruction system should contain only a small number of instructions that are used frequently, and provide some necessary instructions to support the operating system and high-level languages.
The deeper reason is that although Intel is in the personal computer market, by the early 90s, x86 architecture CISC processors have occupied 80% of the personal computer market, but in the workstation and data center market, IBM's RISC processors account for nearly 100% of the share, it is easy to have a cognition: efficient and high-performance RISC is the future, overly complex CISC is the past.
With the official announcement of the processor of the PowerPC platform, this view has rapidly popularized, and everyone has begun to look forward to the arrival of the Macintosh with PowerPC, for the die-hard fans who have been using Apple computers, Apple and IBM will surely sweep the PC market.
In March 1994, the Power Macintosh 6100/7100/8100 was officially released, as the first Macintosh computers equipped with PowerPC processors, their performance far exceeded the previous Motorola 68K series of Apple computers, according to MacWorld tests, when running software, the performance of three Power Macintosh is much better than computers with top Pentium processors.
As Apple continued to increase production capacity and began advertising, Power Macintosh ushered in a significant increase in sales, and as of January 1995, Apple had sold more than 1 million Power Macintosh, which was good news for the newly formed AIM Alliance.
However, this is the only good news for the AIM Alliance. PowerPC did breathe new life into the declining Macintosh, but other than that was almost all bad news: remember the two companies that were founded earlier? Taligent burned $400 million, releasing only a few tepid programming frameworks instead of the promised revolutionary operating system; Kaleida spent $200 million to finally deliver the ScriptX multimedia presentation engine, at a time when other products were already firmly in the market; As for the more than $1 billion PowerPC architecture, there has been almost no progress except for the Macintosh, and the number of PowerPC computers produced by IBM and other manufacturers is almost negligible...
Of course, the deadliest is still to come, on August 24, 1995, Microsoft released the Windows 95 operating system, this epoch-making operating system I believe everyone has heard of it, in Windows 3.1, Microsoft and Apple's system There is still a big gap, whether it is ease of use or aesthetics, the former is difficult to compare with the latter.
But Windows 95 changed that, not only extracting a large number of features from the Mac, but also greatly improving usability, such as long file names, trash cans, desktops, simple application switching, plug-and-play peripherals... Some of the parts we are used to today were once available to Macs and not to Windows, but since 1995, the gap between Microsoft and Apple has been closed to a level that is acceptable to most people.
In addition, Windows 95 also has the function that Mac does not have, that is, "preemptive multitasking", in the previous operating system, multitasking mode is "collaborative multitasking", a task in the CPU, unless it gives up the use of the CPU, otherwise will completely occupy the CPU, so tasks need to collaborate, and "preemptive multitasking", the control of the CPU is in the hands of the operating system, it will be prioritized according to the degree of importance, users do not need to worry about the task occupies the CPU, Because the system will reasonably allocate time blocks to each running task, such as the background download we are used to today, in the "collaborative multitasking" system, you just switch to another program, the download will stop immediately, and "preemptive multitasking" does not have to worry about this problem at all.
Of course, many Apple fans are still dismissive of Windows 95, and MacUser magazine even added a few big words to the cover: "Windows 95: So What?" (Windows 95: So what), which may also reflect Apple's thinking about Windows 95 to some extent.
Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said Windows 95 "has made a huge leap in technical capabilities and stability," and the market is equally not deceptive, with Microsoft selling 1 million copies of Windows 95 in the first week, more than 7 million copies in the first five weeks, and 40 million copies of Windows 95 in the first year.
In fact, with the release of Windows 95, after the closure of Taligent and Kaleida, the battle between the AIM Alliance and the Win Alliance has ended, and neither Apple nor IBM has been able to recover, and the Mac and PowerPC market share has fallen from 16% at its peak to 4%, and finally the niche computer market.
In just a few years, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy because of a small chip.
Back to square one Apple
It wasn't until 1997 that Jobs returned to Apple as a king.
As can be seen from the Macintosh in 1984, Jobs may not be the most perfect but the best product manager, as a paranoid, his characteristics are reflected in his own Apple products, Apple in the mid-to-late 90s more and more mediocre, just need Jobs such a good talent to join.
In fact, Jobs did save Apple, and it is not too much to describe him in 1998 as "turning the tide and supporting the building."
The new official took office with three fires, and Jobs cut all Apple's redundant products when he took office, keeping only the most core Mac. In 1998, the iMac G3 was released, and the translucent Bondi Blue subverted everyone's perception, breaking the perception that computers can only be cookie-cutter beige boxes.
Later iBooks and Power Macs continued this style, and these colorful computers began to make Apple famous again.
In 2001, Apple released the first portable digital audio player, the iPod, in 2002, the iMac G4 with a unique lamp design was released, and in 2003, the PowerBooks with a metal case were released... In the first few years of the 21st century, Apple introduced countless products that are still talked about today, and their designs are not outdated even 20 years later.
After Jobs returned to Apple, Apple's overall product design has made a qualitative leap, to a certain extent to drive Mac sales, and iPod popularity around the world, but also let Apple gradually out of the shadow of the 90s, the biggest problem at this time is not Apple, but its PowerPC processor, too weak performance and high power consumption has been criticized by users.
Of course, Jobs has long been aware of these problems, and has been urging IBM's upgrade research and development and Motorola's process improvement, but at this time PowerPC in the personal computer market has existed in name only, Intel relies on 80%-90% of the market share, follows Moore's Law, invests a lot of research and development costs to improve processor performance, while constantly upgrading the semiconductor process, while IBM and Motorola occupy less than two percent of the market, but to catch up with the progress of the semiconductor market hegemon, which is obviously impossible, Over time, the gap between the two will only grow.
The first to come out of the basket is Motorola, Jobs canceled the license and copy of the Mac system after the return, which contradicted the production of PowerPC processor Motorola, Motorola even withdrew from the AIM Alliance in 1998, although the subsequent return, but the production and delivery of the PowerPC G4 processor manufactured by Motorola was repeatedly delayed, and finally due to losses, Motorola spun off the semiconductor department and established Freescale, and the iron triangle of the AIM Alliance was broken.
After 2002, Apple switched to the PowerPC G5 processor manufactured by IBM, as a result, Jobs had publicly promised that the main frequency of the Mac could reach 3GHz at the end of 2004, and the result was not achieved at all, and even the PowerPC G5 processor could not be equipped on Apple's notebook due to heat dissipation and power consumption, resulting in PowerBook has not upgraded the chip for 5 consecutive years...
On June 6, 2005, Apple officially announced that it would use Intel processors in Macs, fully migrate to Intel platforms, and abandon the PowerPC architecture, ending a decade-long partnership with IBM, and the AIM Alliance was officially dissolved.
PowerPC's bankruptcy is Apple's biggest fall in chips, from 1992 to 2006, after 14 years, the last left is a chicken feather, IBM, Motorola, Apple, the three parties have hardly benefited from this cooperation, is a very rare three-loss situation.
Of course, we can blame Apple for not being aware of current affairs, but the deeper reason behind it is the IDM (Integrated Design and Manufacture) model created by Intel, this vertical integration model from design, manufacturing, packaging and testing to the sale of its own brand IC, naturally has a high threshold, whether it is Motorola or PowerPC, from beginning to end has not formed enough scale effect, And at a disadvantage, they are unlikely to make counter-cyclical investments to stud, and the final defeat is completely expected.
In November 2020, Apple officially launched the MacBook with M1 chip, Apple computer returned to RISC, and its partners from IBM and Motorola quietly became ARM and TSMC, this time Apple's confidence far exceeds 1992, after all, Apple relies on the iPhone, has long been among the world's first market value companies, the most lacking in hand is cash, whether it is a fab, or chip design, as long as there is money, there is no unevenness.
Apple even made second-hand preparations: in September last year, analysts said that Apple is fully moving its embedded cores to the RISC-V architecture, and released the recruitment of relevant system architects, and it is very likely that Apple will switch to RISC-V cores on the coprocessor of the product in the future.
However, today's Apple, the main business is no longer Mac, do M series chips, not so much to compete with Wintel, but to be born in the process of developing A series mobile phone chips born bold ideas, and finally put into practice results, and Mac products with M series chips, it is difficult to say that it is a direct competitor of Windows products, Apple's Mac revenue in the first fiscal quarter of 2023 fell 28.7% year-on-year, and total shipments fell by 46% to 4 million units, directly leading to Apple's big cut, As the PC winter came, the Mac wasn't immune.
In fact, Apple's self-developed chip Mac products are not to attract Windows users, but to please old Mac users who are still using Intel processors, just like the 1994 Macintosh with PowerPC processors, Apple's Mac product route and market share may have been doomed as early as Jobs designed the Apple II.
CISC-RISC-CISC-RISC, cisc-risc, Apple that goes around in circles on the instruction set to return to the original point, has long regarded the development of new categories as its mission, from iPad to Apple Watch, from AirPods to the unannounced Apple headset, a new ecological picture has already unfolded, and the chip that builds the ecology, Apple must also be firmly in hand, perhaps the ultimate vision of this Cupertino company in California after experiencing PowerPC setbacks.