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.