[duskwuff]

> The problem is not that they made a faster CPU -- that's great. The problem is that they won't sell you the faster CPU unless you buy their phone and their OS and bind yourself to be locked into their app store.

You think this is something which only Apple does?

Go try to buy a Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm. Or an Exynos from Samsung. Or (going a little further afield) a Graviton CPU from Amazon.

There are a lot of components which are only sold to select manufacturing partners, or which are entirely exclusive to a manufacturer. Apple is not doing anything outlandish here.

[AnthonyMouse]

The people who would be buying the chips from Apple are the same one who are buying them from Samsung or Qualcomm.

Those companies will basically sell them to anyone willing to place a volume order, and if there was any demand for it they'd be selling them retail on Newegg. (There isn't because they don't use sockets and there aren't enough individual customers with the equipment to solder it to a logic board, but an individual can get one of their CPUs on a single board computer.)

Amazon doesn't sell Gravitron separately but they also don't sell it whatsoever. I don't know what to call that but it's not what's happening with Apple.

[duskwuff]

> Those companies will basically sell them to anyone willing to place a volume order

If that were all, you'd see these parts resold through distributors, just like you do for other components like transistors or DRAM or audio codecs. But you don't -- the manufacturers place restrictions on how these parts can be used, and those restrictions typically forbid their resale.

(As an aside, the same is also true of many Intel and AMD CPUs. Some parts are sold to consumers, but many others -- including non-socketed CPUs and motherboard chipsets -- are only sold directly to manufacturers, typically under restrictive terms.)

> an individual can get one of their CPUs on a single board computer

I've never seen one. There's plenty of SBCs built around ARM SoCs which are available on the open market, like Allwinnner or Rockchip, but, as far as I'm aware, Samsung and Qualcomm only sell parts to manufacturers intending to use them in end-user products.