[aseo]

I always understood the move to Apple Silicon was also for supply chain concerns, and not just technical. I remember reading that Apple would often express frustration at having to align their products' schedules based on Intel's schedules, and there would be a lack of support from Intel in their collaboration -- I could see this is a a valid bottleneck for Apple, and this isn't their first rodeo in processor transitions. Of course, now, their bottleneck moves down the supply chain and will be TSMC, but TSMC seems to be happy to provide whatever Apple asks for, as seen with their large 3nm orders.

[flashback2199]

So why work only with Intel and not also with AMD. Never understood that. They chose vendor lock in so of course the vendor is going to sit on it same as Motorola did and later IBM. Now they still have vendor lock in except the vendor is internal. From a distance, it looks super dumb, betting that you can do better with an internal project than playing off the established duopoly. I'm sure I'm too out of the know to understand.

[acdha]

One thing to remember is that hardware designs have a much longer lead time than software and significant support commitments since they need to maintain a business relationship for a decade. When AMD started gaining on speed versus Intel, especially for the thermally-constrained systems Apple sells, Apple already had an in-house CPU design team which was doing good work and they were quite familiar with the benefits in terms of roadmap coordination, pricing, and support.

[wtallis]

Apple used the AMD chips that didn't absolutely suck: the GPUs (and they still got plenty of criticism for that). AMD's CPUs were not at all suitable for Apple's most important products until the past few years. The first Zen mobile processors were only a year before Intel's 10nm Ice Lake.