More importantly, Apple doesn't fab its own chips. TSMC does. Everyone has access to the same vendor. Similarly everyone has access to ARM cores. Yet somehow Apple managed to build an Intel/AMD competitor and others didn't? What am I missing?
"Apple Bought All of TSMC's 3nm Capacity for an Entire Year"
Being the first to buy 3nm doesn't prove what was initially claimed.
Unlikely.
Who can pay as much as Apple - likely in advance and for exclusivity.
My guess is that Apple is financing some of the equipment (TSMC is a high capital business, and Apple has overseas retained profits it doesn't want to repatriate) and there will be contracts for the exclusive use of the new equipment nodes. With everything designed for taxation efficiency.
Using the latest process certainly helps but look at the older ones as well - it’s not like the performance gap disappeared when competing AMD processors were launched on the TSMC 5nm process, but that really highlighted the different trade offs those teams make: Zen4 CPUs certainly dusted the Apple chips, but the ones which did were desktop / server designs using far more power, too, since that’s where the money is in the PC side.
But for similar performance, like in the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pros, Intel was embarrassed. The M1s were so much faster and cooler than the Intel chips they replaced it was hilarious.
The Mac Pro is absolutely the weak spot. Apple doesn’t sell enough so it seems unlikely they will spend the money to try and keep up with Intel there. The first Apple Silicon Mac Pro is not what people wanted. And I don’t know if that machine will be coming.