It does somewhat amuse me to see the degree to which people rationalise Apple's ongoing, consistent control freakery with excuses and justifications. Every time a story like this comes up the amount of people defending what they do really shocks me.
I used to work for Imagination Technologies, whose GPU all Apple mobile devices are based upon. I was at the company when Apple announced that they would no longer require IMG and would be using their own entirely independently developed GPU (knocking 75% off the share value of the company and effectively bankrupting them).
Looking from the inside of the story, the degree to which people both here on HN and in the media at large including, amazingly, the BBC, a state-funded UK news organisation took Apple's side of the issue when they were very clearly talking complete nonsense shocked me.
Apple simply relied on the fact that a. they'd poached a ton of top people at IMG b. IMG could not afford to battle the decision in court (an aside - IMG and Apple have quietly signed a deal for IP again recently - hardly suggesting that Apple have gone entirely independent of IMG). We could get into the fact that the 'independent' GPU was bug-for-bug identical to IMG HW, or documentation for it literally referenced PowerVR enums but I don't want to dwell too much on that.
My point is that Apple have for years taken an approach of trying to vertically integrate EVERYTHING and gain independent control of EVERYTHING. Many suppliers went the way of IMG, and this lack of repairability is in my opinion simply the latest episode of Apple not wanting anybody else whatsoever involved in their products.
The trend continues with Apple moving to all-ARM chips (we'll see what happens with ARM IP, nvidia can fight longer in court so perhaps Apple will leave that alone) and will, in my opinion, continue in all areas for all of their products.
Whether you think it's right or wrong it surprises me that people seem to lose sight of or deny this ongoing trend.
I agree with you but it doesn’t shock me at all, Apple knows very well what kind of users they are targeting and do enough to excite them every year with new toys.
For a while they had taken the lead on many fronts but they seem to have lost that advantage due to their prevailing goal that isn’t likely to change anytime soon and for which they are doing better than anyone: money.
I am not enamored with the alternative either and would avoid google’s tentacles even with more vehemence so the only thing i’m hoping for is an opensource phone os that isn’t controlled by any corp. I’m looking at the PinePhone which is very promising for a linux phone but they still need to catch up with the competition. If we all supported these types of initiatives we’d have what we really want even sooner.
I used to work for Imagination Technologies, whose GPU all Apple mobile devices are based upon. I was at the company when Apple announced that they would no longer require IMG and would be using their own entirely independently developed GPU (knocking 75% off the share value of the company and effectively bankrupting them).
Looking from the inside of the story, the degree to which people both here on HN and in the media at large including, amazingly, the BBC, a state-funded UK news organisation took Apple's side of the issue when they were very clearly talking complete nonsense shocked me.
Apple simply relied on the fact that a. they'd poached a ton of top people at IMG b. IMG could not afford to battle the decision in court (an aside - IMG and Apple have quietly signed a deal for IP again recently - hardly suggesting that Apple have gone entirely independent of IMG). We could get into the fact that the 'independent' GPU was bug-for-bug identical to IMG HW, or documentation for it literally referenced PowerVR enums but I don't want to dwell too much on that.
My point is that Apple have for years taken an approach of trying to vertically integrate EVERYTHING and gain independent control of EVERYTHING. Many suppliers went the way of IMG, and this lack of repairability is in my opinion simply the latest episode of Apple not wanting anybody else whatsoever involved in their products.
The trend continues with Apple moving to all-ARM chips (we'll see what happens with ARM IP, nvidia can fight longer in court so perhaps Apple will leave that alone) and will, in my opinion, continue in all areas for all of their products.
Whether you think it's right or wrong it surprises me that people seem to lose sight of or deny this ongoing trend.