The reality is that every business unit needs to justify its existence and when asking for headcount, it’s easier to point to a revenue stream you’re tied to rather than “we help sell some things to businesses”

I don’t disagree with that. But equally most business units in Apple are not tied to revenue streams. From R&D though to developers for other non-subscription software. And that’s before you then factor in the non-delivery team (eg finance, HR, lawyers, etc).

So it’s not like a review stream is a requirement.

Moreover, even back when they did have back office tooling as a revenue stream (eg OSX Server), Apple still left it to slowly rot before finally discontinuing it.

So I just don’t think this is something anyone’s Apple cares enough about. If they did, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation to begin with.

If that were the case, the only business units that would ever be get funding would be the hardware sales.

Even with AWS I doubt many of the service teams make enough money to justify their existence alone.

Are you sure Apple does their accounting in that way?