April 9, 1993: PowerPC Chips Ship

The PowerPC is gone from Apple's roadmaps but for well over ten years it was the heart of every Mac that shipped. The PowerPC was a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chip that offered some pretty clear advantages over the X86 architecture used by rival chip makers.

The advantages were seen as compelling enough that Apple trusted that consumers would feel the same way and stuck with their policy of a pricing premium. The switch also entailed a massive reworking of the OS as well as headaches for developers.

The chips that were supposed to ensure Apple of massive profits, an insurmountable technical lead, and growing market share will soon be completely gone from Apple computers. Motorola shipped the first PowerPC chips, running at 50 and 66 MHz, this month in 1993.