20 Years of Intel Macs

[KingOfPain]

Ars Technica has a nice article about the beginning and the end of Intel Macs:

20 years of Intel Macs: Why Apple switched, and why it switched again

Remembering the ups and downs of the Intel Mac era as it finally winds down.

arstechnica.com

Coincidentally, a few days prior to that article I was curious how long Macs used the specific processor architectures.
I used release and end of production dates from Wikipedia, so there might be errors. I also only counted Macs; with Lisa, the 68K has been used by Apple for an additional year.
The first number after the equal sign is the number of years until the next architecture was released. The second number is the total years of production.

Macintosh: 1984/1–1996/10 = 10 | 12.5
PowerMac: 1994/3–2006/8 = 12 | 12.5
Intel Mac: 2006/1–2023/6 = 15 | 17.5
ARM Mac: 2020/11–

It's interesting that both 68K and PPC were produced for roughly 12.5 years. But for the PowerMac the overlap with x86 is much shorter, since the switch was pretty quick as Apple must have been desparate to get new CPUs into their computers after a drought of new PowerPCs.
Intel Macs have the same 2.5 year overlap as the 68K Macs, but this might be largely due to the Mac Pro using Intel for a long time.

 

[Queen6]

Well my 2011 auto-destruct 15" MacBook Pro is still up and running after 14.7 years. I only held onto it as they are notorious for failing due to the dGPU melting as they are burners & AMD screwed up. This one on the other hand seems impervious to abuse, its now our offline media server and is only shutdown when we move house. At this point just curious how long it will last. Had a 2008 15" MBP scrapped it as wasn't viable to fix. Like or loath when Apple makes a decision it moves on it fast and is potentially part of the alure.

Now on Apple silicon for the Mac... Expect Apple will stay on this platform as it offers them complete control of the HW, well until they come up with something better...

Q-6

 

[KingOfPain]

Now on Apple silicon for the Mac... Expect Apple will stay on this platform as it offers them complete control of the HW, well until they come up with something better...

There was a comment to the article that I linked, where someone wrote that Intel never understood that Apple like to control the whole stack. While that story was about Apple doing their own mainboard instead of using the reference design, now they really control the whole stack, from CPU to mainboard to operating system.

 

[Queen6]

There was a comment to the article that I linked, where someone wrote that Intel never understood that Apple like to control the whole stack. While that story was about Apple doing their own mainboard instead of using the reference design, now they really control the whole stack, from CPU to mainboard to operating system.

Better for all as you can see how much faster Apple can move versus waiting on Intel...

Q-6

 

[NotEntirelyConfused]

I also only counted Macs; with Lisa, the 68K has been used by Apple for an additional year.

Seems fair. Though the Lisa became for some the "Mac XL", that wasn't possible until well after the Mac was released.

I actually had one of those for a while. And because I was young and crazy, I hauled it around NYC a few times, upside down on the tank of my motorcycle. Mindboggling, in retrospect.