AIM alliance

The AIM alliance was a landmark partnership from 1991 to the late 1990s between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. The goal was to create a vast new computing platform of hardware, operating systems, and applications that challenged the market dominance of the Wintel platform of Microsoft Windows on Intel processors. AIM's new hardware was based on IBM's POWER architecture, a second-generation RISC architecture for enterprise computing. The large-scale POWER was reduced at Apple's direction into the single-chip PowerPC architecture suitable for mass market personal computers.

AIM had three main initiatives. The first, nicknamed PowerPC alliance, was the creation of the PowerPC family of microprocessors. The second was the formation of two independent joint-venture companies: Taligent Inc., which was tasked with bringing Apple's robust Pink prototype to market as a next-generation object-oriented operating system; and Kaleida Labs, which developed a cross-platform multimedia scripting language. The third initiative was the creation of an open standard for PowerPC-based hardware, first as the PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP) and later as the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP), which allowed many manufacturers to build open-standard computers running an industry-wide variety of operating systems.

Taligent and Kaleida Labs became commercial failures after several years, reabsorbed by their parent companies. The open hardware standards failed to gain permanent traction, in part because Apple CEO Steve Jobs canceled the Mac OS licensing program program for third-party CHRP hardware in 1998. AIM effectively dissolved by the late 1990s. However, the PowerPC architecture was a significant success, powering Macintosh computers from 1994 until Apple's transition to Intel processors in 2006. PowerPC was prolifically adopted by many vendors in markets such as embedded systems, supercomputing, and video game consoles, and gained a lasting legacy.

From the 1980s into the 1990s, the computer industry was moving from a model of just individual personal computers toward an interconnected world, where no single company could afford to be vertically isolated anymore. One analyst explained, "If you try to do everything, you can't have economies of scale." Apple, IBM, and Motorola were important technology companies, but Intel processors powered 85% of personal computers, and Microsoft dominated the market for operating systems. Motorola wanted to erode Intel's lead in the processor market, and Apple and IBM foresaw relegation to packaging Microsoft and Intel technology. Infinite Loop says "most people at Apple knew the company would have to enter into ventures with some of its erstwhile enemies, license its technology, or get bought". Microsoft's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly threatened competition industrywide, and their competing Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) consortium was recently formed to promote x86 and MIPS architectures.

In the late 1980s, Apple used Motorola 68000 series CPUs for its computers. Intel's Andy Grove tried to persuade Apple to transition to x86, but CEO John Sculley and others believed that CISC microprocessors such as x86 would not be competitive with RISC. Phil Hester, a designer of the IBM RS/6000, convinced IBM's president Jack Kuehler of the necessity of a business alliance. Kuehler called Apple President Michael Spindler, who bought into the approach for a design that could challenge the Wintel PC model. Sculley was even more enthusiastic.

On July 3, 1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent, proposing an alliance and outlining its long-term strategic technology goals. Its main goal was creating a single unifying open-standard computing platform for the whole industry, made of a new hardware design and a next-generation operating system. IBM and Motorola planned to have 300 engineers to codevelop chips at a joint manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. Motorola planned to sell the chips to Apple or anyone else. IBM intended to bring the Macintosh operating system into the enterprise and Apple intended to become a prime customer for the new POWER hardware platform.

Industry analysts considered AIM's announcement to be critically poorly communicated and confusing to the outside world, but nonetheless saw this partnership as an overall competitive force against Microsoft's monopoly and Intel's and Microsoft's duopoly. The urgency for the AIM alliance was heightened by Microsoft's recent formation of the competing Advanced Computing Environment (ACE), a 21-company consortium intended to establish a new industry standard based on x86 and MIPS architecture processors. Some analysts viewed AIM as a direct, and perhaps late, counter-alliance to the formidable ACE. Some viewed AIM as a bold but risky attempt to create a new "mainstream" of computing, with one expert noting the formidable challenge ahead: "Apple and IBM are going to have to be more than friends. They are going to have to be brothers."

Executives said the negotiations were stop and go, sometimes seeming to founder and then speeding up as impasses were resolved. The main disagreements occurred when one company or the other thought it was giving away too much technology. Executives said that the technological contributions of both sides were evaluated and that money was used to balance the terms, in what negotiators referred to as the "cosmic arithmetic". But how much money is being paid, and which company is paying, is closely guarded information.