Apple saw the writing on the wall and bailed years ago, built their own chips and denied them a large customer.
It’s a really bad sign when a customer decides it can out innovate you by internally copying your entire business and production line.
It’s a really bad sign when a customer decides it can out innovate you by internally copying your entire business and production line.
Not necessarily, at scale, especially Apple's scale, vertical integration can make a ton of sense - for control, innovation, price, risk hedging.
It is the fact they can build a much better chip in almost any metric so far ahead of Intel is the red flag.
And historically, wasn't this juts an extension of their fight with Samsung in the mobile space more than a rejection of Intel?
I think you’re correct that this was initially because Apple didn’t want to be at the behest of Samsung. But as Apple iterated on their mobile and tablet chips, they had the choice to bring them to their desktop and laptop lines or not to. They took that gamble and here we are today with non Intel Macs.