There has always been talk of Apple migrating to x86 chips, especially during those tumultuous and painful years
when the S.S. Macintosh was navigated by the clumsy First Mate Motorola. As we all know now, IBM came in to save the
day, directing us to safer seas and splendid shores with the IBM G5 chips. But according to the Inquirer (no, not the
Enquirer), Intel was very close to sticking an “Intel Inside” sticker onto the most recently released Power Macs. The
internal company memorandum and the implication:
A few minutes ago we announced that we have won a deal to design, develop and make the processor for the next
generation of Microsoft’s Xbox game system.
Microsoft selected us for one very simple reason — we are the leaders in the advanced technologies they need for
Xbox.
This is a major win for us on several fronts:
It illustrates and capitalizes on our deep technology and service capabilities. The new Xbox technologies will be
based on the latest in IBM’s family of state-of-the-art processors;
It is the single largest win for Engineering & Technology Services and a substantial foundry win for our 300 mm
facility;
We’ve handed Intel another defeat. Earlier this year, we kept them out of the Apple G5 and now
we’ve thrown them out of Xbox. (Not bad, considering one Intel executive recently called us “trivial”)
