I think that would spread Apple’s chip team too thinly between competing priorities - and require them to do E2E stuff they’d never be interested in doing. What’s always happened, even during Jobs, is that Apple would do something nice and backend-y, and then not be able to keep it up as they’d pour resources into some consumer product. (See: WebObjects, Xserve, Mac OS Server.)

WebObjects was from NeXT. The Xserve saw regular updates until 2010. Mac OS Server was a GUI for a bunch of open source tools, and where it wasn’t (Workgroup Manager), they replaced with the MDM.

Apple had more money when they killed these than they did when these products were introduced. It’s not a resources issue. It’s a care issue. Same reason they fired the Mac OS Automation team. Same reason their documentation sucks hot diarrhea and all their good stuff is in the “documentation archive”. Penny pinching. “Shareholder value”. New blood destroying shit they didn’t understand.