They're ignoring that Apple (and others) are competing in design at all and claiming the only progress is in fab process. Fab process is very important, but it is most important in x86 land where you don't have many options but to improve fabrication, hence Intel's massive spend there. Beyond that you have the competing groups of TSMC, GlobalFoundries etc. that will spend way more than any non-specialist is going to.
The rest of the processor industry, including the ARM ecosystem where some people get to compete with ARM themselves, is making a lot of progress in working out how to improve the layout of the transistors, such that two designs on the same process can perform quite differently. In the case of the Ax devices and the Krait this is a surprisingly significant margin, and they tend to be at least a whole generation ahead in performance of the designs coming out of ARM. This is not something to be dismissed.
I'm not dismissing it, but to ignore the fact that the iPhone is wholly dependent on tons of innovation in their supply chain is a problem. No matter how fancy your transistor layout gets, if, starting tomorrow, there were no more process node shrinks, and no more innovation in other ares of silicon (e.g. low-k/high-k), the mobile revolution would be effectively frozen in place.
Phones would have no choice but to get bigger to get more powerful or to get longer battery life and perf/watt would hit a wall.
Point being, Apple spends a disproportionately small sum on R&D relative to the size of their earnings and they don't seem to be funding basic research at all like large corporations of the past, e.g. IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.
With the government cutting funds for basic research, we need corporations who are sitting on $4 trillion in cash, to pick up the slack.
Great analogy actually, because the President and Krugman are exactly right in this regard. We ignore the ecosystem that was built, and which we benefit from, by those before us at our peril.
You should see technology as a forest. You can mine it for medical cures, for wood, it's an enormous externality that you leverage. And you have a duty to continue planting more back into it to keep it going for yourself and everyone who comes after you.
The Apple narrative is too bound up in heroic origination stories, without due credit and acknowledge to the huge role played by the rest of the industry. I'm only saying that if one profits immensely by using knowledge produced by one's forefathers, one has a duty to reinvest and keep driving it forward, not hoarding piles of cash. (oh, and not going insanely litigious and secretive on discoveries either :) )
The rest of the processor industry, including the ARM ecosystem where some people get to compete with ARM themselves, is making a lot of progress in working out how to improve the layout of the transistors, such that two designs on the same process can perform quite differently. In the case of the Ax devices and the Krait this is a surprisingly significant margin, and they tend to be at least a whole generation ahead in performance of the designs coming out of ARM. This is not something to be dismissed.