> this explanation is just cope

I'm not saying they played 5D chess. Maybe they got lucky. But they're coming out of this infrastructure boom with the second-highes P/E ratio in the Magnificent 7 [1], dividend intact, and tens of billions of cash on balance sheet unburned (and their stock and balance sheet unincumbered by new debt or stock sales).

[1] https://dividend.watch/lists/magnificent-7-stocks

But it seems likely that in the coming years, people will expect Apple's products to include the latest cutting edge AI (I don't mean useless AI shoved into every possible thing, I mean something closer to a useful Siri). Giving everyone else a 10+ year head start on you is not a good position to be in.

If you choose to outsource your AI to OpenAI/Anthropic/whomever, now you're beholden to another (risky), and for a critical feature of your ecosystem that your customers have grown accustomed to and to expect.