In part, yes. But at the same time, all of that money and business has spurred research, development and investment which have improved computing technology dr

In part, yes. But at the same time, all of that money and business has spurred research, development and investment which have improved computing technology dramatically. Today, you can buy an STM32 Nucleo board for under £20 with all sorts of interesting capabilities. Then you have Arduino (ironically both more expensive and less capable than the STM32), then RPi and all the rest. All of these can be fun to experiment with, and they are all pretty open systems. With Apple's launch of their ARM systems, I do think we're entering a new stage of computing evolution: it's the beginning of the end of the dominance of x86. I do wonder where it will go for the mainstream. It's only a matter of time for ARM desktops and laptops to become more generally available. We've already got systems like the RPi 3 and 4 which are totally usable as desktop replacements. But they are designed to meet a low price point, and lack general PCI-E, fast and reliable storage options etc., which limit their use. It wouldn't take much to make a slightly bigger ARMv8 board with PCI-E/NVME, and sell it as a general purpose system. (I'm sure there are already options for this, it's just not widely available or price competitive.)