And possibly other types of hardware also had price bumped or used outdated chips because Apple has to build their iPhone/mac n+1.
That's why you see some folks actually mocking Apple about the situation. They were already affected.
If anything this might force a market-wide fix in the medium term.
Between the $99/year sideloading, Liquid Glass and fighting fruitlessly against CUDA, I think Apple needs a break to reflect on why their software strategy is so unpopular with everyone. The hardware advances are doing them more harm than good at this point.
Intel seems to be very competitive again when it comes to laptop battery life. If macbooks again get the reputation of sluggy and overheating that's not great for sales.
if 18A gets going and is good, I am sure Apple will purchase capacity
But the point here is that a few companies are outbidding everyone else, hoarding shittons of compute and putting it into their data centers, to rent to people. This is effectively taking compute ownership away from consumers and centralizing compute i.e. un-democratising.
Apple outcompeting other companies to put their products into the hands of regular people is vastly different.
But perhaps Apple needs them to power translucent UIs and Siri.