But that's the job of a company...
> but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason.
Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It would be really hard for any other company to rely on Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that exists in that way are company phones, but those are not handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers. Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming one from their own treatment of their supply chain).
Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only works in one specific combination". But that's literally where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is someone that provides an in-depth description of a single use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a certain quality level and if you fail that you will have to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates. They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up with Nvidia
But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")