[giantrobot]

Apple's advantage is manifold. They have an in-house chip design firm that is very talented and an architecture license for ARM. So they can make CPUs that do whatever they need. They also build the OS so can take advantage of new CPU and GPU features or go the other way and request hardware features to support software designs.

They're also using essentially the same cores between their mobile and desktop products. Apple is their own ARM ecosystem. An improved core for the A-series chips is an automatic improvement for the next M-series chip. Most arm licensees have to wait for ARM to come out with new cores.

The fact Apple can book the initial runs of any of TSMC's process nodes is just one of many of their advantage over other ARM and x86 manufacturers.