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Apple CPUs be like:
1976: Introducing our 6502 based computer.
1986: Nevermind, we're all about 68000 now.
1996: Motorola who? This is a PPC house.
2006: PPC is dead, we're going x86.
2020: Fine, we're making our own chips: Apple Silicon!
Frankly, the move to M1 came four year late by their cadence.
Meanwhile, PCs be like:
1978: 8086
1982: 80286
1985: 80386
1989: 80486
1993: Pentium
...
2023: Corei9-13905
And the i9 can STILL run 8086 software.
@saramg To be fair, the Intels could run PPC software (emulated) and the reason why they went intel is that they didn't get RISC processors in the amounts they needed. Otherwise there would never have been the intel intermezzo....
@heiglandreas I mean, if we're gonna count emulation, I'm sure my watch could emulate an Apple ][e just fine. :p
@saramg That emulation could be pretty inefficient and you'd still have capacity left 
@saramg But in the end the comparrison is borked as it compares one CPU line (and at least to me "PC" is synonymous with "Intel inside") with the machines sold by one Vendor.
A more fair comparison would be between Apple and Sun and .... Oh, they also used Motorola, then Sparc and later intel processors
@heiglandreas I mean, you're technically right, which is the best kind of right, but from a mass-consumer stand point there's: Mac, Windows, and the things the nerds use.
Windows being meta-synonymous with PC here.
@saramg From a mass comsumers PoV there was only ever Intel Macs - which was the reason that there are intel macs in the first place....
(OK: and now ARM but the mass of mac users is used to always buy the leatest and greatest anyhow so who cares... )
@heiglandreas @saramg at that point, IBM and Motorola had mostly given up on doing their own PCs (as in desktops and laptops), so the biggest PC customer for PowerPC was Apple, and they just didn’t have the volume to justify designing an efficient laptop chip. Intel, OTOH, had plenty of customers and therefore motivation.
@heiglandreas @saramg there’s an interesting alt universe where the iPhone (2007) runs on PowerPC, the Mac sticks to it, and today’s “Apple Silicon” designs are ppc64, not arm64. Would that have been better, worse, roughly the same? 