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Apple has only become this profitable by abandoning their early days' Not Invented Here syndrome, when they used to design and build their products from soup to

Apple has only become this profitable by abandoning their early days' Not Invented Here syndrome, when they used to design and build their products from soup to nuts, and instead riding the wave of innovation by specialized third party suppliers with off-the-shelf solutions. They have long discovered that it's much less risky and much more profitable to let others do the fundamental component development work, and focus on integration of third party solutions, with occasional guidance towards meeting their goals. Even for a company the size of Apple, it can be difficult to predict where the industry will go, and a few mistakes can leave you dependent on some expensive proprietary technology dead-end while the rest of the industry passes you by with lower prices and superior functionality. It's much cheaper and just as effective against competitors to tie up the world's supply of DRAM than to build a foundry and make all those chips yourself.

drawkbox 15y ago
True but it is a better path for many things. PowerPC sucked, once they went *nix and Intel it blew up. ARM and flash memory for devices, they push that as well that is not just reserved for Apple's use. Also OpenGL ES won the battle on mobile quietly due to Apple's support of Khronos and the mobile markets they created. Webkit, html5, canvas and more are direct results of their investment and extra cash. I hope that continues. LLVM is another area they have taken to another level. There certainly isn't anything wrong with making better what is out there and at the same time creating the basis for other products (i.e. Chromium from WebKit) so you really own more of the market as a whole and the direction it takes. As a game developer, the way OpenGL ES flat out won on devices with no real challenge from Microsoft on DirectX is amazing on that front alone. I'd say whatever they were doing with their money since the mid-90's was right.

drawkbox 15y ago

True but it is a better path for many things. PowerPC sucked, once they went *nix and Intel it blew up. ARM and flash memory for devices, they push that as well that is not just reserved for Apple's use. Also OpenGL ES won the battle on mobile quietly due to Apple's support of Khronos and the mobile markets they created. Webkit, html5, canvas and more are direct results of their investment and extra cash. I hope that continues. LLVM is another area they have taken to another level. There certainly isn't anything wrong with making better what is out there and at the same time creating the basis for other products (i.e. Chromium from WebKit) so you really own more of the market as a whole and the direction it takes. As a game developer, the way OpenGL ES flat out won on devices with no real challenge from Microsoft on DirectX is amazing on that front alone. I'd say whatever they were doing with their money since the mid-90's was right.