CompuServe Messages

"I hope so … 68-risc" There won't be a "68-risc". Motorola is fully committed to the PowerPC architecture. Incidentally, the partnership in terms of the priority of its partners is IBM-Motorola-Apple, the latter being around primarily because they were the only mass market computer manufacturer willing to bring the PowerPC to market at an early date. Just to keep things in perspective, Motorola has approximately a 7% share of the CPU market and Intel has about 95%. Microsoft has about 85% of the OS market with MS-DOS and Windows and Apple has about 6%. As you saw on Computer Chronicles, the PowerPC is getting plenty of press, but buyers are not flocking to it. Apple claims it shipped more than a million PowerPC units in the first year – but they don't explain that their original projections were for a million PowerPC *systems* and, in fact, they had to include upgrade cards to make their million claim. That's not really very encouraging. IBM has been producing a PowerPC workstation for some time (the PowerPC design is based on IBM RISC architecture), but I have no ideas of what the numbers are. Finally, IBM and Apple made their "blow your mind away" announcement several times in several different ways. But no one's mind seems to have been blown away or even changed. Apple's market share keeps slipping, although unit sales are up. And IBM has continuously delaying the market introduction of their PowerPC mass market units. In short, the PowerPC story is now old news. It's a very capable CPU, but it really isn't setting the world on fire. Jerry