> How many billions of dollars? Rounding-error-sized marginal costs. Even if you don't plan on pivoting architectures, it's good practice to write as much cod

> How many billions of dollars? Rounding-error-sized marginal costs. Even if you don't plan on pivoting architectures, it's good practice to write as much code as possible without assembly/intrinsics. If you're writing standards-compliant C/C++/Objective-C/Swift/* it's not a huge burden to change architectures. They also have past-experience with such transitions, so hopefully they kept the "keep the code portable" mantra close over the past 10+ years. The choice to do this seems relatively obvious for Apple. They have spent years building up their silicon game with portables. Their frustration with Intel is also palpable, so it was probably "just" a waiting game (not "how" or "if") in deciding when to pull the trigger and start using those chips outside of iPhones/iPads.