Also: Before, Apple was dependent on Intel (whose "product" is an integrated chip design and the fab to make it). Now they're dependent on TSMC (whose "product" is a fab). I'm... not really sure they've reduced their dependence? If TSMC starts falling behind Intel--which doesn't seem likely, but what happened to Intel didn't seem likely two decades ago--Apple will be stuck.

A series is their own chip design, not Power PC or Intel designs.

It's the CPUs they have built for their purposes, which is next level hardware independence.

> seems to imply they have to pick and choose what they pursue. They really don't, especially if it's hard- vs software.

Money can often just be one part of the equation.

To do things well you also need - available & capable technical resource, suitable facilities, available & capable leadership and management (with engaging at the right level in the business) and a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve/working towards.

Given how Apple appears to operate, I wonder if a strong desire for senior management control/oversight over major developments means they (artificially) limit how many concurrent large-scale things they can work on at any given time?

Maybe not, but that'd be my guess.

> It's a trillion dollar company, and has been for a while. Sure it could have tackled both, but what do I know.

I didn't imply, it's explicit in my comment. it's what their actions show. Their updates make their systems worse and worse, Tim Cook is out and Siri is in shambles. It might have been something else, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative is just sheer stupidity.

Heavily funded startups have terrible track records in reality. The only cases where it seems to have worked is when the money was used to undermine the market dynamics by nuking competition via severe underpricing.

here is a clue delivered -- money does not make software better, and lots of money often results in worse.. it makes no sense? actual experience begs to differ.

Classical homework assignment -- the Mythical Man Month and related essays

I only partly agree with this. The answer is maddeningly more complicated.

Some parts of their software stack -- higher up than the kernel -- are actually pretty great. There's a lot of realy brilliant stuff in their system frameworks, and in SwiftUI, Cocoa, and UIKit. I've been using Linux at home recently, and I find myself missing some of it.

But, on the flip side, suddenly you hid maddening bugs, crashes, or terrible developer-experience papercuts. And, of course, there's the App Store, which is just evil. For my next app I'm just going to go Notarization only, and see how that goes...

The comment above is on to something. I find CarPlay to much more valuable and much more of a lock in to the iPhone than Siri. I do not think I could ever go back to using the infotainment systems that ship with cars. So makes sense why they might prioritize over Siri. And in the context of CarPlay, the simplicity of Siri is nice. I really only need it to execute a few simple commands like looking up directions, making calls, reading / sending texts, playing a podcast, etc.

I don't dispute that, but Apple made its business on the premise of being the best in the business in terms of UX. Note though that you can have great UX powered by mediocre software, so those aren't mutually exclusive.