[manquer]

It was not like Apple was a good considerate benevolent dictator before power got to their head. They have always been like this.

Apple won't have had the resources to develop something the Apple Silicon or most other products, if they aren't ruthless about their profit.

Is it worth the cost for society ? Depends on the POV, it sucks to be the handicraft producer when a big factory opens up, but more people do get product and benefit from it.

[mchaynes]

We can build amazing products and not be terrible to other people/companies. Companies rely on public funding and public technologies and therefore are accountable to do right by the public. We always make this false dichotomy of “good products or good companies” and it’s just not true

[manquer]

Yet i don't see that happening, what public funding does Apple product has really depended on ?

R&D is only part of taking a product to users. There is a lot of steps in between , marketing , support , distribution , manufacturing, packaging a new tech into viable a value proposition and so on.

Research is important , but purely research or even better tech alone is insufficient, there are plenty of examples of companies who have great R&D but failed to make useful products used by real people at scale (aka commericalize) .