[mendocino]

> So i maintain that Apple would have needed Samsung to enable them to use an A15.

I would guess if Apple is capable of designing their own Microarchitectures they would be perfectly capable of compiling a bunch of HDL code they can get straight from ARM. [1]

> but i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it

Samsung also acts as a foundry, they manufacture designs of other people in the same sense a printing shop prints books written by other people. I don't think this involves Samsung "giving Apple a CPU platform", at least not any more.

[1] Yes, in reality thats quite a bit more complicated.