RANDOM APPLE MEMORY
PowerPC transition
Apple’s first processor switch was fraught behind the scenes but flawless up front, recalls
Adam Banks
ONE OF THE advantages of the Macintosh, from its launch in 1984, was the Motorola 68000 processor, which was inherently more powerful than the IBM PC’s Intel 8088. But by the late 1980s the 68000 series was falling behind CEO John Sculley’s ambitions for the high-end market, and a Cray supercomputer was wheeled in to enable the in-house development of a brand new CPU.