[amalcon]

That confused me a bit, thanks. In '98, Macs still used PPC architecture, and the IPhone didn't exist. I don't know what kind of CPU the IPod was using at the time -- I'd guess ARM. Still, that seemed like it could get away with an off the shelf CPU -- buying a bunch of chip design talent doesn't seem like it would be super rational then.

[classichasclass]

For that matter, PA Semi was itself a Power licensee. They were developing the PA6T, which might have been in whatever the next PowerBook would have been. After the purchase, Apple still had to make promises about its availability because it was being used in some military applications even though they would never use the PA6T in one of their own machines. I think the AmigaOne X1000 was the only generally available computer that ever used it.

[leejoramo]

The Newton was Apple’s first big usage of ARM

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton

[masklinn]

iPod was only released in 2001, though, and the idea to make a PMP only really got steam in 2000, with much of the work only happening after Fadell was urgency is how Apple got to contract out much of the work, even he was initially contracted before getting fully hired when his proof of concept got the nod).

OTOH the ill-fated Newton was also ARM-based. As well as the emate pseudo-laptop.