imageI’m now journeying through 1994 in my exploration of The Computer Chronicles.  The following gem I discovered was too precious not to pass along.

We’re at Macworld Expo – Boston, and Apple is launching its Power PC-based Macintosh computers.  Up until that time, the Macintosh had been based on Morotola’s 68000 family of microprocessors.  Moving to the Power PC meant moving to an incompatible architecture, and Apple is nervous that developers might not come along for the transition.

At the trade show, a Mr. Bob LeVitus came along with a brave prediction:

Thanks Bob for that cogent analysis!

Yep, you heard right.  “Intel won’t be able to get any more performance out of a CISC chip.”  The evil empire has been leapfrogged.  What great insight!

Of course, we now know that:

  1. Intel did somehow manage to surpass the performance of  a 1994 Pentium processor
  2. Apple nearly went bankrupt shipping Power PC processors
  3. Apple switched to Intel processors in 2006

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