To expand on the other (excellent) comment; cloud profits are hard. Google Cloud only recently started turning a profit, and Microsoft's Azure purportedly doesn

To expand on the other (excellent) comment; cloud profits are hard. Google Cloud only recently started turning a profit, and Microsoft's Azure purportedly doesn't make money at all. You'd be building up to compete with Amazon AWS and Oracle Cloud, both of whom are fierce competitors. Apple has already proven that they can build a server product, they just haven't figured out the "why" yet. Cloud customers are trying to buy low-margin compute with good support for their software. Apple is trying to sell high-margin compute with good support for their software. The indifference towards either party's needs damned Xserve from the start, and Apple would have to take a radically different approach if they want a shot at succeeding nowadays. Their hardware would be competing with Nvidia's enormous Grace servers and Ampere's dirt-cheap ARM vCPUs. Their software would probably be ignored unless it was Open Source. And all that begs the question - why bother? If Apple won't be making iPhone-sized hardware margins or getting Mac-level brand loyalty, they'd be spending money to undermine their core products. Comparatively, a VR headset that retreads the last decade of HMD tech a-la iPhone is a pretty safe bet.