“IBM PowerPC chips could cover Apple’s entire product line… and could build PowerPC chips that satisfy the needs of the entire range of Apple’s product lines, including portables such as the PowerBook, said Rod Adkins, vice president of development for IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, which produces IBM’s PowerPC chips. But instead he said the nature of Apple’s relationship with IBM, including the fact that it had another processor supplier in Freescale Semiconductor Inc., is what limited the IBM chip roadmap available to it, Adkins said,” John G. Spooner reports for eWeek. “‘They had Freescale primarily for the low-end and mobile solutions, and they really had IBM focus more on PowerBook, xServe and iMac. That’s where we collaborated deeply with Apple,’ Adkins said. But ‘There’s really nothing in the architecture that prevents having an end-to-end line that can serve [all of] their needs.’”

“Intel, as Adkins sees it, won out mainly based on its mobile chip technology and the way Intel chips fit into Apple’s software planes, even though he maintains that IBM has the capability to deliver a product such as a mobile PowerPC 970 chip,” Spooner reports.

Spooner reports, “It’s also possible Intel showed Jobs a new roadmap that, as Jobs suggested, gives Intel a major advantage in power and performance versus IBM PowerPCs, one analyst said. ‘The presumption is that Jobs was given some disclosure of a future road map that’s not yet been given to any chip analyst,’ said Richard Doherty, principal analyst at The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, N.Y. ‘IBM’s [Adkins] is being truthful in what [he's] saying,’ Doherty said. ‘As far as shipping chips, IBM’s ahead. And clearly from what jobs said on stage, there’s some turn in the [Intel] roadmap that puts them at par or ahead of IBM. But until that roadmap is made public by Apple or Intel, there’s no substantiation’ of what Jobs said [during his WWDC keynote].”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Trying to save face, but failing. You’ll hear a lot of sniping from all sides during the transition. IBM could’ve made a mobile PowerPC 970 chip? Hold on a sec while we run that concept through our 3GHz Power Mac G5…

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