If they do not make these available today, making them available to Microsoft would mean making them public (once they are outside Apple’s control, they have to assume they will be public). In addition, making them available to Microsoft, would make it more difficult for them to restrict access to them in other contexts (read iOS/iPadOS/watchOS). If they keep them completely internal, their anti-trust argument is stronger than if they provide selective access to one other player.
The interfaces would be public, but not the implementation. I don't see any sort of secrecy concerns here. Would there be more people in the circle of trust? Yeah. Would Microsoft and others start to know more detail about what's in the SoC? Yeah. Would they know enough to replicate it in any way? No.
I do agree that Apple would be risking accusations of selective access. Probably not anti-trust, but certainly accusations and bad PR suggesting they're playing favorites or keeping some functionality for themselves. I believe they have the right to do so, but sharing some but not all makes a black and white issue grey and there are a lot of people who can't handle grey.
I am not sure in what world you live, but that is not how it would play out. If an Apple Silicon Mac had 24 hours of battery life under macOS and 12 under Windows, most tech reviewers would describe the machine as having 12 hours of battery life. Same for every other aspect. Your argument is the same one that is used by people to justify Apple allowing side loading on iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS: “If someone got a virus from a side loaded product, that would be their fault not Apple’s”. However, history shows us that is not true. When developers used a pirated version of Xcode to develop iOS apps that introduced problems the reporting was that Xcode had a virus.
Also, people who bought Apple Silicon Systems to run Windows, would describe their experience to others without differentiating: “I have a mac and it crashes all the time.” ”I have a Mac and I only get 12 hours of battery life”.
Yeah, still not worried about this. If nothing else, I think Windows still has a worse reputation than MacOS once you get outside of MacRumors troll country. People would run the comparisons and over time and the pattern would become clear. There's an amusing amount paranoia around Apple, so there may be some people who think the reason Windows is slow is because Apple is withholding access to key functionality, but I think the difference will be seen between the OSs and libraries, not the underlying hardware.
In 2006, their market cap was about $200 Billion. They had 1 major product line and were starting to see serious revenue from the iPod. Today their market cap is around $2 Trillion and they have the iPhone, iPad (a business that is by itself larger than Apple was then), Apple Watch, etc. and over $200 billion in the bank. Seems quite a bit stronger.
Sure, but I don't think the existance of Apple Watch and iPad impact what OSs Apple allows to run on Mac. They were a minor player in the PC market in 2006, and they're a minor player now. One difference is that they have an opportunity to become an at least somewhat larger player now because they're showing a performance edge.
I don't think "we have iPhones now, we don't need Windows on Mac" is a coherent enough argument from Apple's perspective. They've indicated they're fine with other OSes running on their hardware, I don't see a reason to think they wouldn't be.
First, it is not just about having more people, it means splitting the attention of those that are currently working on these products/projects. Second, if it was that easy to just hire more people, Apple would still rather hire them for projects that will net them more revenue and control.
Easy to say, but that is not how these things work in the real world. The liaison team will take resources and they have their own interests. They will lobby for changes that will benefit them and they customer. If they did what you describe, they would essentially be Microsoft in the 90’s. Using internal APIs and other things that they did not make available to others. When they make these things available to no one externally, they are in a stronger position to deny others access in the iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/watchOS realm.
Having more people means not splitting people's attention.
There is already a team focused on making Macs more compatible with Windows. Bootcamp provides Windows drivers for Mac hardware, and they managed to do that alongside MacOS development and the M1 and MacOS for M1 developments. I think they can walk and chew gum on this.
It also creates a problem for Microsoft in that it would create a fork (Windows and Windows on Apple Silicon). Anyone who wanted to take advantage of the Apple Silicon custom hardware would then lock those applications onto Apple machines, increasing sales of Apple’s machines and making native macOS ports more likely. None of these things is good for Microsoft
They've already forked. Post 1 on this thread is about Windows on Arm.
Part of what already makes Windows such a hot mess is that they don't lock anything to particular hardware. They're not locked to Nvidia graphics, or Intel, or AMD/ATI. They're not locked to specific audio or camera hardware. They don't restrict what drivers you can install to access custom hardware and accelerators on the PCIe busses.
I think you might be making a big thing out of what is just a normal Tuesday for OS developers.
Why not? Everyone said they would not make their own computers and yet now they are. The only way to control one’s destiny is to do it. To quote the over quoted: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
I still think it's dumb for them to be making their own computers and competing with their customers. Just like I think the Pixel is a dumb idea. Fortunately they're bad enough at it that their customers aren't feeling particularly threatened.
I should be more precise in my language. I think it's dumb for Microsoft's customers to buy their OS from a company that is willing to compete with them directly, just like I think it's dumb for Android customers to do so. Therefore, I think it's dumb for Microsoft and Google to put their customers in a position where they find themselves making dumb decisions.
That said, the reason I don't think they'll make their own chips isn't for business reasons, but because it's really, really, hard. Designing a motherboard is a relative cakewalk. Apple spent years bringing the team they have together and developing the experience they have and they funded that exercise by selling hundreds of millions of iOS devices. Best I can tell, Apple ships more processors a year than Intel does. There must be a billion devices out there right now with Apple Silicon in them, and Apple ramped that up by competing with mediocre entries in the smartphone space until they had matured their designs to the point they could cross over to PCs. Where would Microsoft practice their design chops until they were competitive?
So yeah, if it became existential to Microsoft, they could design a CPU, but as far as I can tell they'd be starting from standing start and it would take years before they were competitive with existing offerings. There's a few companies they might buy to bootstrap the effort, but they'd still be starting from behind.
