[mschuster91]

> Dumb question, but aren't iPads full of non-Apple hardware too?

They are but the parts that matter (i.e. the SoC containing the CPU and GPU, as well as anything RF such as WiFi/BT) is either made by Apple themselves or at least Apple has the full spec sheets - Apple writes all the drivers on their own, which was why NVIDIA got the boot, they didn't want to give Apple the documentation they needed (and were still dealing with the fallout of Soldergate, which made it an even easier decision for Apple). I think they also do the binary firmware blobs for RF devices, or at least that was the suspicion years ago when I was more involved in Hackintoshes as the stability of the same chipset was night and day between Windows and macOS.

Apple controls the full stack from hardware over kernel to a huge part of userspace. No other vendor comes even close to that level of control and experience, even Google only started rolling their own SoC (Tensor series) in the Pixel 6 and above two years ago.

[bob-09]

To me it seems like Google wants the same level of control, but is sacrificing user experience and ChromeOS brand impression to achieve it.

To me, resolution of this issue looks like either letting hardware providers release their own drivers to enable them to support the sales of hardware currently on the shelves, or refuse to license ChromeOS to hardware providers unwilling to meet support standards that Google’s customers expect. Selling unsupported hardware as new seems like a recipe to drive customers away from the ChromeOS experience.