But there are some companies which have started doing the same thing:
- System76
- Tuxedo
These companies test their devices well on a distro and well, it reflects in their pricing too!
Just here to point out that they use a standard commercial off-the-shelf TPM manufactured by Infineon. It's not custom hardware. As with all TPMs, it is the firmware/OS that decides whether to use it for lock-in purposes or freedom.
So they can never achieve the same integration as Apple.
Dell, Lenovo, Purism, Pine64 et al. do.
The two in your parent may (at least System76’s laptops are said to) use Clevo hardware, but they can still ship with custom open source firmware.
It’s also not as if Apple sells their own custom CPU at the moment. Even then, they’ll probably buy other parts from third parties (eg. they buy iPhone OLEDs from Samsung, though they’re said to calibrate them differently).
And finally, integration can be seen as a bad thing. It’s conducive to lock in (see above comment on ARM Macs ending Hackintoshes).
I'm pretty sure Purism's are just standard barebones too, but with some extra modifications like hardware switches. They showed how they solder the wires to the motherboard - if they'd designed it themselves they wouldn't have to do that.
Pine64, indeed, that's true. The enclosure is standard (the PB Pro is the same as my Chinese "ChuWi" laptop :') ) but indeed they made a custom motherboard. I really like that company.