> Apple in particular has $20B in its couch cushions

I wonder how long it REALLY took them to move from intel to apple silicon, which they don't even make.

It might be easy, like a consumer deciding to generate their own electricity (pv on the roof)

or it might be slightly harder, like a consumer deciding to generate their own electricity by drilling for oil, refining it, etc...

Well, they acquired PA Semi in 2008, they used their first chip (the A4) in the iPad in 2010, and they progressively iterated using the chip in phones until they announced the switch from Intel in 2020 (concurrently, more or less, with the A14). So it took them 12 years and 10 different chips.