This may prove to be the best thing Apple has ever done, rolling their own.
They pretty much already stood alone (at least in the consumer/mainstream arena) when it came to the hardware + OS/apps part, but they still had to rely on others for the underlying muscle/function.
Supply shortages/constraints aside (and they won't last forever), they are now firmly in the driver's seat, across the board...
their hardware, running
their OS/apps and now powered by
their guts/processors. Can you imagine the position that puts them in, to where they have full control to tweak/optimize those three things for maximum impact?
I'd say that puts the platform in a damn good place for some time to come.
I love that they're doing this. I wasn't sure I'd ever see it happen, but it's awesome that I am.
What other outfit - normal, affordable mainstream ones (I'm not talking $19,000 custom, specialized server/enterprise shit that nobody's going to buy/receive for Christmas
) - can say this? I can't think of any. All the others are a box from
this company, running an OS from
that company, with processors/graphics from
yet another company. No comparison between that and what Apple should be able to accomplish in the years to come, with all those things under their thumb/roof.