Now that they own the SoC design pipeline, they’re really able to flex these muscles.
The above link is a video where he mentions that.
It is true that Apple’s major software products like iOS and MacOS are only available on Apple’s own hardware. But the Steve Jobs justification for this (which he said in a different interview I can’t find right now so I will paraphrase) is that he felt Apple made the best hardware and software in the world so he wanted Apple’s customers to experience the best software on the best hardware possible which he felt only Apple could provide. (I wish I could find the exact quote.)
Anyway according to Steve Jobs Apple is a software first company.
If you care about software you have to make your own hardware.
I'll allow that perhaps Apple considers hardware a means to an end. But what an end.
Very often the intel chips in macbooks were stellar, they were just seriously inhibited by Apples terrible cooling designs and so were permanently throttled.
They could never provide decent cooling for the chips coupled with their desire to make paper thin devices.
Curiously they managed to figure this out exactly when it became their silicon instead (M1 MacBook Pros were notably thicker and with more cooling capacity than the outgoing Intel ones)
And this would eventually evolve into MacOS.
But I have had 2 iMac power supply die one me, the grounding problem on a MBP and a major annoyance with power noise leaking from a Mac Mini (makes for some nasty audio output, hilarious when you consider they supposedly target creative who clearly need good audio output).
You always find people raving about Apple's engineering prowess but my experience is that it's mostly a smoke show, they make things look good, miniaturise/oversimplify beyond what is reasonable and you often end up with major hardware flaws that are just a pain to deal with.
They always managed to have good performance and a premium feeling package but I don't think their engineering tradeoffs are actually very good most of the time.
As far as I can tell, the new Mac Mini design still has grounding issues, and you will get humming issues, which is beyond stupid for a product of that caliber. At this point I don't care about having the power supply inside the dam box, just use a brick if you must to prevent that sort of problem. This is particularly infuriating since they made the iMac PSU external, which is beyond stupid for an AiO.
But common sense left Apple a long time ago and now they just chase specs benchmarks and fashionnable UIs above everything.
That is probably the least of reasons why people buy Apple - to many it's just a status symbol, and the OS is a secondary consideration.
https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+products+as+status+sym...
EDIT: I seem to be getting downvoted, so I will just leave this here for people to see I am not lying:
https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-is-not-a-hard...
[1] They used that exact term, and it has stuck with me ever since.
Apple's product revenue in this fiscal year has been $233B, with a gross margin of $86B.
Their services revenue is $80B with $60B gross margin.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2025-q3/FY25_Q3_Consol...
Look, I totally understand making an off-hand comment like you did based on a gut feeling. Nobody can fact-check everything they write, and everyone is wrong sometimes. But it is pretty lazy to demand a source when you were just making things up. When challenged with specific and verifiable nubmers, you should have checked the single obvious source for the financials of any public company. Their quarterly statements.
Regardless of revenue, Apple isn't a hardware company or a software company. It's a product company. The hardware doesn't exist merely to run the software, nor does the software exist merely to give functionality to the hardware. Both exist to create the product. Neither side is the "main" one, they're both parts of what ultimately ships.
Watch this and maybe you might change your mind:
Modern Apple is also quite a bit more integrated. A company designing their own highly competitive CPUs is more hardware-oriented than one that gets their CPUs off the shelf from Intel.
Yes, it's $70B a year from iPhones alone and $23B from the totality of the Services org. (including all app store / subscription proceeds). Significantly more than 50% of the company's total profits come from hardware sales.
We should be comparing profit on those departments not revenue. Do you have those figures?
It is well known that companies often sell the physicval devices at a loss, in order to make the real money from the services on top.
Apple is and always has been a HW company first.
Steve Jobs consistently made the point that Apples hardware is the same as everyone elses, what makes them different is they make the best software which enables the best user experience.
Here see this quote from Steve Jobs which shows that his attitude is the complete opposite of what you wrote.