The switch from 68k to PowerPC was because 68k was dead, Motorola was pushing the 88k which was already failing in the market, and while Apple also considered other architectures like SPARC, they didn't want to be tied to only a single company's fortunes again like they were with the 68k.
So when IBM came to them asking "hey how about we scale down POWER to a desktop chip for you?" Apple also brought in Motorola so that they could dual-source their chips and not be dependent on one company, and PowerPC was born. Rather than being an up-and-coming competitor, PowerPC probably wouldn't exist without Apple's involvement (they would probably still have pursued a scaled-down POWER, but it wouldn't be PowerPC)
Actually, Apple transitioned from Motorola 68k to PowerPC in the mid-90s and the 2000s transition from PowerPC to x86 was their second successful transition.
Apple didn't adopt PowerPC after fighting with Motorola and it was no shock to Motorola, or the world. Motorola and Apple and IBM worked together on PowerPC in a consortium, after the Motorola 88000 RISC (which Apple also tried) failed for various reasons.
This was all in the exiled-Jobs years while Apple was thrashing about trying to build a real operating system (or systems) to replace classic Mac OS. (NeXT also played with the m88k.)
And ARM wasn't new to Apple with the iOS systems, either. The Newton was built around ARM back in the 90s.
But they had to do _something_, staying on the 68k wasn’t an option. It couldn’t compete with the Pentium and Motorola had effectively abandoned the series, focusing their efforts on the PowerPC.
Apple made a lot of bad decisions in the 90s, but I don’t see how the switch to PPC was one of them.
Well, certainly I think a part of it was that they could unify on one Chip with the rest of the industry did provide some economies of scale advantages, though rumor has it that Apple has always paid a little bit more for its chips so they could guarantee certain things and dictate as such.
I believe the main driver though, as pointed out in this CNET article https://www.cnet.com/news/four-years-later-why-did-apple-dro... was that IBM could not deliver on a powerful enough powerpc chip that would also meet the other constraints, namely, at this time, one of the biggest markets Apple had was the notebook market, and its sales there were exploding. IBM was unable to deliver a lower thermal envelope for its portable chipsets on top of performance issues.
I think this more than anything else pushed that reality.
It didn't work out because Apple didn't have the in-house talent to pull it off. They had to rely on IBM and Motorola to do the actual chip design, while Apple focussed on creating the software for these chips. IBM and Motorola started to lose interest in promoting PowerPC in anything but the embedded space and server markets.
This time around, Apple has brought all the talent they need to do all of the design in-house. No more design-by-committee. We're dealing with Steve Jobs after all ;)
PowerPC really died in 1997-98 when it became clear that Jobs wasn't going to license Mac OS (classic or X) for 3rd party PowerPC boxes anymore, and Windows NT on PPC wasn't going anywhere.
Without an operating system, IBM and Motorola didn't have an incentive to build PC chips anymore. The G4 happened because it was already in development and the vector extensions were useful for Motorola's embedded ambitions. The G5 happened because Apple basically paid IBM to make a desktop chip out of their POWER designs, AFAIK.
Around 2004, there was a startup PowerPC maker called P.A. Semi [1] that apparently competed for Apple's Mac CPU business. After Apple went Intel, they acquired P.A. Semi to design iPhone chips instead.
PowerPC essentially died as a desktop and server processor once Apple decided to go Intel. IBM decided to go back towards Power's roots with the POWER5 (the follow-on to the PPC970 in the Power Mac G5 and the PowerPC-based XServes).
It's because back then, if I remember correctly, new revisions of Macintoshes with PowerPC processors had CPU speed increments like, 80, 90, 100mhz, and meanwhile the Pentium was going 100, 200, 300, 400... (at least that's how it felt being a mac user...)
Also, I believe around that time the deal between IBM and Motorola was ending and they had already decided not to continue development of the PowerPC.
In general, IBM was just going in a different direction with Power than Apple needed them to be going in. IBM was and is focused on the highest end, high priced end of the server market.
Apple moved from the 68K to PowerPC and, from there, to x86. Many companies did such moves before: HP from 68K to PA-RISC, Sun, from 68K to SPARC and IBM from the proprietary AS/400 to POWER. All these migrations were very successful.
From what I recall at the time Apple (as well as others) tended to do things to keep M$ OSs off their hardware and differentiate themselves from IBM so they would have more control of the platform and sell boxes. M$ goal was to be the dominate OS then. IBM misguidedly chose to make money on hardware. They were too accustom to getting exorbitant amounts for their software ie leasing it.
It was not so easy to port an OS back then and IBM PCs were the dominate species so too was DOS then Windows. Zilog was starting to fade also - the Z8000 never caught on. Apple became the only company keeping the 68000 alive. Motorola was not up to the challenge of competing with Intel or Apple was not making enough volume to make it worth their effort. Apple - fighting the last war - thought IBM was their competitor so eschewed any compatibility with IBM PCs and chose to go it alone. It wasn't until later (after Jobs return) that they realized they were wrong and things had moved on. Reasons for choosing a CPU where more about power and speed.
At least PowerPC machines were available for reasonable prices from Apple for about a decade - and Linux was quite well supported in addition to OS X. But with Motorola’s loss of interest in the PC and server market and IBM’s focus on processors for consoles, there was no future for Apple in the growing mobile market. After all, we’re still waiting for the G5 Powerbook :).
Apple and assumed they were the driving force behind it's use
Quite the opposite. Apple, according to the book The Race for a New Game Machine, was an unprofitable demanding customer. The scale of the XBox 360 and PS3 dwarfed Apple's usage and IBM made several decisions that were contrary to Apple's needs. PowerPC for the embedded market has been the primary driver of PowerPC development.
At the time Apple was licensing MacOS to clone manufacturers like Power Computing. It's likely they thought the only way to grow the clone business was to open the floodgates to Intel PC clone manufacturers.
Of course the NeXT merger brought back Steve Jobs who killed the clone program immediately.
So when IBM came to them asking "hey how about we scale down POWER to a desktop chip for you?" Apple also brought in Motorola so that they could dual-source their chips and not be dependent on one company, and PowerPC was born. Rather than being an up-and-coming competitor, PowerPC probably wouldn't exist without Apple's involvement (they would probably still have pursued a scaled-down POWER, but it wouldn't be PowerPC)
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