[brookst]

Agreed on all counts. Apple’s hedge with Intel makes a ton of sense, especially if they continue to pay a premium for first dibs on a significant chunk of TSMC’s newest nodes.

So far Apple has been aggressive about stopping production of older processors, but as we see with MacBook Neo, even the lowest chips are increasingly overpowered for many users.

I expect even if Intel can’t match TSMC’s latest, they’ll be able to produce one or two generations behind at low cost and high volume. (I worked at Intel for 5 years or so, that phrase would have gotten me fired back then)

[aurareturn]

Going with Intel might mean higher cost. Intel has lower yields and making chips in the US is much costly than Taiwan. You can see this in TSMC Arizona chip costs vs Taiwan.