4 ms·

It helps that Apple controls the hardware of their devices.

• wtallis 10y ago
  It does help some, but probably the biggest advantage is that they simply didn't have to support x86 machines from before 2006. By that point, ACPI, AHCI, EHCI, OHCI, HDA drivers would get you a working system, except for 3D graphics and networking. That's why Hackintosh systems are viable: basic PC hardware is extremely standardized now compared to what it was in the 1990s. Apple's hardware platform control helped them cut down on the number of network drivers they needed to implement, and their decision to do the 3D graphics drivers in-house didn't save them much effort but made things a lot more straightforward. By contrast, Windows 7 officially supports GPUs from 2001 running on systems that could be quite a bit older, from the days when there were half a dozen third-party chipset vendors that couldn't properly implement a spec even when they were trying to make standard interfaces. Windows 10 moves the cutoff forward quite a bit with its NX bit requirement, but still targets a diversity of core system components that simply didn't exist by the time Apple entered the x86 market. Microsoft and Apple both have to contend with pretty much the same driver challenges for peripherals like printers, although it tends to be easier to put those drivers in userspace where 32-bit vs 64-bit isn't a showstopper.