Reasons
Steve Jobs stated that Apple's primary motivation for the transition was their disappointment with the progress of IBM's development of PowerPC technology, and their greater faith in Intel to meet Apple's needs. In particular, he cited the performance per watt projections in the roadmap provided by Intel. This is an especially important consideration in laptop design, which affects the hours of use per battery charge.
In June 2003, Jobs had introduced Macs based on the PowerPC G5 processor and promised that within a year, the clock speed of the part would be up to 3 GHz. Two years later, 3 GHz G5s were still not available, and rumors continued that IBM's low yields on the POWER4-derived chip were to blame. Further, the heat produced by the chip proved an obstacle to deploying it in a laptop computer, which had become the fastest growing segment of the personal computer industry.
Some observers were surprised that Apple had not made a deal with AMD, which had in recent years become a strong competitor to Intel. AMD had recently released its competitive 64-bit Opteron platform, and by moving straight to x86-64 Apple would have had one less architecture transition. Analysts have speculated that AMD's lack of low-power designs at the time were behind the decision to go with Intel.
Read more about this topic: Apple's Transition To Intel Processors
Famous quotes containing the word reasons:
“Here we also see: what this divinity lacks is not only a sense of shame—and there are also other reasons for conjecturing that in several respects all of the gods could learn from us humans. We humans are—more humane.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.”
—F.H. (Francis Herbert)
“From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)