Apple, finally resigned to its fate on the chip

For Apple, the word Silicon is a key that opens the door to a new era, and it is also a spell that makes it fall several times, from product manager Jobs to supply chain master Cook, either making their own chips or on the way to consider chips.

 A chip measuring only a few square centimeters and weighing only a few grams runs through Apple, the company's strongest company, shaping its fate in the desktop and mobile markets.

 From MOTOROLA to IBM, to Intel, finally return to ARM, from CISC to RISC, and then again enable the CISC, finally also RISC, decades repeatedly horizontal jump of apple, become the veritable "three slaves", and between multiple platform architecture became the norm of apple hardware department, let countless engineers and programmers boil white head.

 In most of the time, apple replacement platform is a wise choice, in the macOS ecological stability, a stronger performance lower power consumption processor, can undoubtedly drive replacement demand, as at the end of 2020 M series chips, directly drive apple in 2021 * quarter MacBook sales rose 94%, for apple's computer business into a shot in the arm.

But Apple's chip exploration wasn't always bumpy, and it even took more than a decade to learn from a complete failure.

 A moment's meeting

 First of all, Apple was born and is related to its chip development.

 In 1975, When Steve Wozniak built a MOS 6502 PC in HP's office, Steve Jobs saw the opportunity and co-founded Apple in 1976, the ——Apple I.

 In 1977, Apple officially launched AppleⅡ, which is a personal computer with color graphics display, it is also equipped with MOS 6502 processor, processor frequency of 1 MHz, $1295, AppleⅡ with excellent scalability and ease of use, in the world great success, into thousands of households.

 Of course, not only AppleⅡ, but also PET by Commodore and RadioShack TRS-80, which were launched in the late 1970s, were popular throughout the 1980s, known as the 8-bit trio.

 Although they are different in the specific configuration, but all adopted the same processor ——MOS 6502, the processor is based on MOTOROLA 6800 processor development, but the price is less than one sixth, cheap and fine, is not only apple, Commodore such computer manufacturers, even Atari and nintendo home game also failed to avoid vulgar, choose with MOS 6502 or compatible version, they led the personal computer revolution in the early 80s.

 It can be said that the MOS 6502, which cost only $25, had a trend in the late 1970s, not just a computer revolution, but also a revolution in semiconductor chips, and Apple was one of the lucky ones.

 As * computer manufacturers, "giant blue" IBM could not ignore the change of the emerging markets, in response to the rapid development of apple AppleⅡ PC, IBM in the internal start code for "chess project" (Project Chess) plan, and in order to reduce the internal constraints, quickly grab market, IBM development team local materials, directly to use the market ready-made processor and system to develop IBM PC.

 After more than a year of preparation and planning, on August 12,1981, IBM * PC ——IBM 5150 officially launched, with Intel 8088 processor, Microsoft's DOS 1.0 operating system, 64K memory version for $1,565.

 Unlike before all the computer manufacturers, IBM no PC design confidential, but made a detailed instructions, IBM PC on sale with a technical reference manual, IBM also claims that can let any ordinary consumers "learn to use the computer", good ease of usability and open technology attitude attracted more ordinary family users to buy.

 IBM PC On the market, sales were 800% higher than IBM's expectations, with monthly shipments reached 40,000 units. In 1983 alone, IBM sold more than 750,000 PC units, and in 1984, IBM's revenue in the PC market reached $400 million, more than twice that of Apple.

 However, the practice of using existing hardware and opening up related technologies soon exposed shortcomings, with other manufacturers inverting the BIOS program, and a bunch of patent-infringing imitations quickly emerged on the market, like responsive Columbia Data, which launched IBM PC's * replica ——MPC 1600-1 in 1982.

 In order to regain its own market, IBM launched its second-generation PC PS / 2 in 1987, upgraded the new microchannel architecture bus standard, not only incompatible with the previous IBM PC, other manufacturers have to pay additional royalties to produce each PS / 2 computer, and even the old IBM PC.

 This, of course, aroused other PC vendors, led by compaq, personal computer manufacturing company alliance is no longer to the giant blue, but announced a set of extended industrial standard architecture of bus standards, a large number of manufacturers began to produce down compatible IBM compatible machine, in the late 80s, a large number of IBM compatible machine instead of IBM become the mainstream market, PC market gradually turned into an open market rather than IBM.

 IBM no longer had the voice of PC. In the early 1990s, Intel, which made processors, and Microsoft, which developed systems, became the dominant players of the PC market, and the Wintel alliance was born.

 Maybe at this time some people will wonder, where is the apple that eats the PC market crab?

 Throughout the 1980s, Apple's presence was not low. After the success of AppleⅡ, three completely different PC projects appeared successively, namely AppleⅢ, Lisa and Macintosh. As the founder, Jobs finally devoted himself to the Macintosh project after successive problems in the AppleⅢ and Lisa projects.

 After years of development, Apple officially launched the Macintosh 128K in 1984, with a MOTOROLA 68000 processor, a simple beige look with a keyboard and mouse, a new graphical user interface, exquisitely integrated design... which made Macintosh the brightest sight of the year, and Macintosh is definitely closer to the popular IBM PC today.

 But Macintosh 128K's small memory prevented many software from being used properly, and the fanless design earned it a reputation as the —— "beige toaster," which Apple later did, such as Macintosh 512K and external floppy disk drives.

 Compared with the previous IBM, apple is like the other side of a coin, it adopted a completely closed strategy on Macintosh, in addition to the processor from MOTOROLA, production and operating system are done by apple, the entire Macintosh ecology firmly in their own hands, this is not only the idea of Steve Jobs, is also the consensus of many apple employees.

 This also led to apple although Macintosh such epoch-making products, also have relatively rich ecology, but with the rising star IBM PC competition, never have the upper hand, AppleⅡ and Macintosh in the mid-80s once occupied about 25% of the personal computer market share, but over time, apple sales are on the rise, occupy the market share is shrinking.

While Macintosh —— Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, apple executives, led by CEO Soley, are not planning a comeback.

 Close longitudinal and even horizontal

 During the Warring States Period, although there were seven more powerful countries, Qi, Qin, Yan, Zhao, Wei, Han and Chu, after a series of reforms such as the Shang Yang Reform, Qin became the most powerful country at one stroke. In this background, the academic school of strategists was born.

 So-called vertical and horizontal, divided into vertical and horizontal, vertical is multiple weak countries together, to resist power, to prevent being merged, and horizontal, on the contrary, is attached to the power, to attack other weak, in order to achieve the purpose of the merger and expansion of the territory, and the glory in the warring states, Sue qin body with six phase, let qin not letter valley, zhang yi to "horizontal" broken "vertical", clear the unified obstacles.

 In the PC market in the 1990s, the theory once again hit the stage.

 Mentioned in the personal computer market, there are three companies played a very important role, respectively is open the personal computer first apple, for AppleⅡ, Macintosh and other computer processor support of MOTOROLA, and to the development of personal computer boom IBM, although they are in the 80s, but in the early 90s, and become frustrated, PC market thriving, Microsoft and Intel can big meat, and the three can only drink soup.

 Wintel Alliance represents the most powerful Qin, and Apple, IBM, MOTOROLA and other PC manufacturers are already weak countries, most PC manufacturers have fallen to Wintel, chose the road, and Intel Microsoft to develop x86 market, and Apple, IBM and MOTOROLA finally to the vertical, three joint resistance Wintel.

 In fact, since the Macintosh, apple has been using MOTOROLA processor, MOTOROLA 68K series processor, became the driver apple computer * power, but in the process of long-term cooperation, apple executives also realized the risk of relying on a single supplier, just when MOTOROLA 68040 processor is in a state of comprehensive behind, unable to compete with Intel pentium series, replace the processor is imperative.

 What about Apple and IBM? Today, the two partnerships may seem unusual, in recent years, the two have been working together to develop enterprise applications and promote iOS devices to corporate customers, but in the early 1990s, Apple and IBM were incredibly willing to cooperate.

 In 1981 IBM PC sale, apple in a full page "warmly welcome IBM" advertising, to the belated IBM launched bitter irony, Macintosh launched in 1984, apple and on the TV on the "1984" ads, apple became a fighting freedom fighter, a hammer out, down the totalitarian giant —— IBM.

 In a more popular terms, Two companies before the'90s never not in a pot: IBM was Big Blue, Conservative and pragmatic fortress of tradition, IBM's day off means that employees may take off their coats, Showing the white shirts they wore inside, Apple was founded by two long-haired youths, Its campus looks more like the Woodstock Rock Festival, Not Wall Street; IBM is talking about enterprise consolidation and system interoperability, Apple talks endlessly about changing the world; IBM will play classical music from Lawrence Welke on the accordion, Apple employees would prefer the Beatles' new album.

 But the two companies, so very different, have ended up standing together. On July 3,1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent in which the two companies will align in the future, lining the long-term strategic technical goal of the partnership to create a unified open computing platform for the industry, which will consists of a new hardware design and next-generation operating systems.

 So-called new hardware design, is IBM developed for years of Power, and operating system, nature is apple is developing a new system, apple, of course, also didn't forget the old friend MOTOROLA, the good at production processor it also pulled in, used to rival three companies, under the market pressure finally shake hands worship the son, and AIM alliance was established.

 The announcement caused a stir, as MacWorld magazine reported that this year, when the earth shook, IBM and Apple announced themselves as Allies.

 Interestingly, apple and IBM before reaching a letter of intent, many secret talks, around February 1991, in IBM Texas office, senior first meeting, considering the IBM conservative characteristics, apple, wearing a suit three-piece engagement, when opened the door, but found with them holding the same idea of IBM executives, wearing jeans and jeans shirt waiting on the seat, quite some drama.

 The cause of the two cooperation, there is external pressure from Wintel, the so-called the enemy of the enemy is a friend this sentence, fit here, but the deeper reason is that apple jobs in 1985, the new CEO, more products from the commercial level, which led to apple more like a pure software service provider, even if there is a wide number of hardware introduced, but they are more and more mediocre in the market, from this perspective, apple like become once the most hate, dragon young to step by step into the abyss of the dragon.

 And IBM in the consumer market, giant blue gradually not confident in themselves, on the one hand, it know already behind The Times, but the arrogance of big companies makes it impossible to accept the fact, IBM is in urgent need of a partner in the mass PC market, gradually declining apple, has become the * object.

 In 1992, apple and IBM set up two companies, Taligent and Kaleida respectively, the former focus is apple since 1988 has been in secret development code for Pink operating system, its main purpose is to put the cross-platform operating system and application framework formally to market, while the latter is to create a cross-platform scripting language, let developers on the basis of its development of Power platform application.

 At this point in 1992, the AIM Alliance outlined a wonderful vision for the world.

 In fact, the market was filled with the idea that CISC (complex instruction set) was outdated, and RISC (streamlined instruction set) was the future, and that x86 processors like Intel would go to the dustbin of history.

 Why is this idea happening? The reason is that the mainstream of the eighties processor namely CISC, is often by increasing the complexity of the hardware to enhance computer performance, in order to facilitate software programming and improve the speed of the program, the engineer is to increase the complex function of the instructions and a variety of flexible address way, eventually lead to hardware more and more complex, cost also increasing.

 And many people have doubts about this development route, and whether more and more instructions are really beneficial to the future development of computers? Many companies and institutions, including IBM, found that although CISC contains hundreds of instructions, but the usage of instructions vary, 80% of instructions, only 20% of the processor instruction system, RISC (streamline instruction set) concept is proposed, the instruction system should only contain those high frequency of a small number of instructions, and provide some necessary instructions to support the operating system and high-level language.

 And deeper reason is that, although Intel in the personal computer market, in the early 90s, x86 architecture CISC processor has occupied 80% of the PC market, but in the workstation and data center market, represented by IBM RISC processor occupied nearly 100% share, it is easy to produce a kind of cognition: efficient high performance RISC is the future, too complex CISC is in the past.

 With IBM officially announcing the PowerPC processor, the idea is gaining popularity, and with the PowerPC Macintosh, the die-hard Apple and IBM are sure to 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, all three Power Macintosh computers were much better than the * Pentium processor when running software.

 Such strong performance will naturally drive market sales. As Apple continues to increase its production capacity and begins to advertise, Power Macintosh has seen a significant sales growth. As of January 1995, Apple has sold more than 1 million Power Macintosh units, which is good news for the newly formed AIM alliance.

 But that's good news for AIM *. PowerPC It did inject new life into Macintosh, but it was almost all bad news: Remember the first two companies? Taligent Burned $400 million, released only some tepid programming framework, not the promised revolutionary operating system; Kaleida spent $200 million, finally delivering the ScriptX multimedia presentation engine with other products in the market; except for the $1 billion PowerPC architecture, the number of PowerPC computers from IBM and others vendors is negligible...

 Of course, the most deadly is still behind, on August 24,1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 operating system, this epoch-making operating system I believe you have heard, in Windows 3.1, Microsoft and Apple's system is still not a large gap, whether it is ease of use or beauty, the former is difficult to compare with the latter.

 But Windows 95 changed this situation, it not only extracted a lot of functions from the Mac, but also greatly improved availability, such as long file name, trash can, desktop, simple application switching, plug and play peripherals... and today we were used to Mac and Windows, but since 1995, the gap between Microsoft and Apple has been eliminated to be acceptable to most people.

in addition, Windows 95 There are also features without a Mac, The term "preemptive multitasking", In the previous operating system, The multitasking approach is " collaborative multitasking, When a task occupies the CPU, Unless it gives up on using the CPU itself, Otherwise, it will completely dominate the CPU, So collaboration between tasks, And the "preemptive multitasking," Control of the CPU is in the hands of the operating system, It prioritizes it by importance, Users do not have to worry about the task occupying the CPU, Because the system will reasonably assign blocks of time to each running task, Like the background download that we are used to today, In the "collaborative multitasking" system, You just switch to another program, The download will stop immediately, "Preemption multitasking" doesn't have to worry about it at all.

 Of course, many Apple fans are still dismissive of Windows 95, and MacUser magazine even added a few words on the cover, " Windows 95: So What?"(Windows 95: So what), which may be a sign of what Apple thinks about Windows 95.

 But others don't see so, Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald (Neil MacDonald), said the Windows 95 "made a huge leap forward in technical ability and stability", the market also not cheat, Microsoft * week sold 1 million Windows 95, in the first five weeks of total sales of more than 7 million, * years has 40 million copies of Windows 95 into homes.

 In fact, with the launch of Windows 95 and the closure of Taligent and Kaleida, the battle between AIM and Wintel has ended. Both Apple and IBM have been unable to recover. Mac and PowerPC market share fell from 16% at their peak to 4%, leading to the niche in the computer market.

Within a few short years, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy with a small chip.

 Back to the origin of the apple

 Until 1997, Jobs returned to Apple with a * return gesture.

From the 1984 Macintosh in 1984, Jobs may not be the most *, but he is the product manager of * show. As a bigot, his characteristics are all reflected in his own Apple products. Apple became more mediocre in the mid and late 1990s, just need the excellent talent like Jobs to join in.

 In fact, Jobs did save Apple, describing him in 1998 as "helping the building to collapse."

 With the new office, Jobs cut down all of Apple's redundant products, keeping only the core Mac. In 1998, with the release of iMac G3, the translucent Bondi blue overturned everyone's perception, breaking the perception that computers can only be the same beige box.

 The iBook and Power Mac also continued this style, and these colorful computers began to make Apple world famous again.

 In 2001, Apple released * Portable digital audio player iPod, 2002, unique iMac G4,2003, PowerBooks with metal cases... In the first years of the 21st century, Apple introduced countless products that are still talked about, even 20 years later.

 After Steve jobs return to apple, apple's overall product design has a qualitative leap, to a certain extent drive Mac sales, and iPod swept the world, also let apple gradually out of the shadow of the 90s, the * problem is not apple, but it carries PowerPC processor, too weak performance and high power consumption has been for the user.

 Jobs, of course, had been aware of these problems, and has been urged the IBM upgrade process development with MOTOROLA, but the PowerPC in the personal computer market has in name only, Intel by 80% to 90% of the market share, follow Moore's law, invest a lot of research and development costs to improve the processor performance, at the same time constantly upgrade the semiconductor technology, IBM and MOTOROLA occupy less than twenty percent of the market, but to catch up with the progress of the semiconductor market dominance, this is obviously impossible, with the passage of time, the gap will only be more and more big.

 First the basket is MOTOROLA, jobs after the return cancelled the Mac system authorization and copy, and the production of PowerPC processor MOTOROLA, MOTOROLA even withdrew in 1998, although the subsequent return, but by MOTOROLA OEM PowerPC G4 processor production delivery has been delayed, eventually due to loss, MOTOROLA stripped the semiconductor sector, established the fiescale, AIM alliance iron triangle was broken.

 Then the basket is IBM, after 2002, apple replaced by IBM OEM PowerPC G5 processor, as a result, jobs had promised publicly, at the end of 2004 Mac frequency can reach 3GHz, the results not, even PowerPC G5 processor due to the problem of heat dissipation and power consumption, we can't carry on apple's laptop, cause PowerBook five years didn't upgrade chip...

 On June 6,2005, Apple officially announced that it would use Intel processors to Intel platforms, and abandon the PowerPC architecture, ending the ten-year partnership with IBM, and the AIM alliance was officially dissolved.

 The bankruptcy of PowerPC is a heel of Apple's chip decline, from 1992 to 2006, after 14 years, the last left is a chicken feather, IBM, MOTOROLA, Apple, the three parties almost did not profit from this cooperation, is a very rare three-losing situation.

 Of course, we can blame apple time, but behind the deeper reason, is Intel IDM (Integrated Design and Manufacture) mode, this from the design, manufacture, encapsulation test to sell its own brand IC are arranged vertical integration mode, natural has a high threshold, whether MOTOROLA or PowerPC, from beginning to end did not form enough the effect of scale, and at a disadvantage they are impossible to reverse cycle investment to shuttle, finally lost to completely in everyone expected.

 In November 2020, apple launched with M1 chip MacBook, apple computer back to RISC, and its partners by IBM and MOTOROLA quietly into ARM and TSMC, this time apple's hand is far more than 1992, apple, after all, already among the world value of the company, the most shortage is cash, whether fabs, or chip design, as long as the money, there is no uneven.

 Apple has even made secondary preparations: last September, analysts said that Apple was moving its embedded core to the RISC-V architecture and announced a hiring of system architects, most likely to move to the RISC-V core on its coprocessor in the future.

 But now apple, the main business is no longer a Mac, do M series chip, is not so much to compete with Wintel, than in the process of development A series phone chip was born out of the bold idea, finally to the result of the practice, and carrying M series chip Mac products, it is hard to say is A direct rival of Win products, apple 2023 * quarter Mac revenue fell 28.7% year on year, total shipments fell by 46% to 4 million units, directly to apple cut single, in the PC winter approaching, Mac also failed.

 In fact, Apple's Mac products are not to attract Windows users, but to please old Mac users who still use Intel processors. Just like Macintosh with PowerPC processor in 1994, Apple's Mac product route and market share may have been destined when Jobs designed AppleⅡ.

CISC-RISC-CISC-RISC, turn around on the instruction set back to the origin of apple, now already develop new category as his mission, from iPad to Apple Watch, from AirPods to unpublished apple head, a new ecological picture, and build ecological chip, apple should firmly in hand, perhaps is the California cupertino company after PowerPC setback * vision.