Apples and Cars

Today Apple announced that it will be switching from Freescale (Formerly Motorola) PowerPC processors to Intel CPUs for the future generation of Mac computers.

I am not sure this is a good idea, for Apple, as this could cause them to lose their distinctiveness, and lose some barriers between the Mac and Windows worlds. OTOH, it may lower the cost of Mac hardware, and it may open the door to some interesting cross-breeding, such as Apple MacOS for Intel based PCs, or (shudder) the option to run Windows on elegant Mac hardware.

So what does this have to do with cars? The PowerPC processor family, a joint venture between IBM and Motorola, is widely used in the automotive world. Smaller versions are used for things like entertainment, brake controllers, climate control, and instrument panels. Many engine controllers (ECUs, aka PCMs) are running with the MPC5xx processors.