Apple is saving “billions” on chips thanks to unique deal with TSMC (opens in new tab)

Lol.

No offense, but you don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about. Apple’s secret to survival after Jobs returned has always been maximizing economies of scale. Although Mac had no market share in 2000, the iMac was the biggest shipping SKU by far. Because of the education market, the iMac was also the largest selling SKU in the distributor channel.

Even today, Apple sells like a dozen major SKUs per product line, and many use the same components. Dell probably sells 200 laptop models.

The Apple strategy as applied to the M1/M2/etc is super successful. They are selling laptops at a 10% premium that are superior, with 45% margins But… the things that make it the best laptop on the market make it a mediocre high end device. That M1 64GB part is expensive because it’s a low volume SoC.

The qualities many people seek in a laptop is superior battery life alongside decent performance, solid build, and good ergonomic design. Apple sells this in spades. Comparing the size of Apple's market of business users with the market of "Everyone [who is] doing serious AI and science" reveals a gargantuan disparity in numbers. And even then, I'm pretty sure you can get plenty of serious AI and science work done on a higher-end Macbook Pro.

I think "anticompetitive" is not the right word to use, unless you've got a lot more to back that up. The facts point more toward the TSMC+Apple dominance being a situation that is somewhere along the lines of "market failure" or "natural monopoly": chip and fab R&D costs have grown so large that only a handful of entities can even theoretically compete at the leading edge, because the total global market for semiconductors is finite. You don't need to postulate anticompetitive behavior to explain the shrinking oligopoly, because the fundamental dynamics of the semiconductor market already predict that trend.

A lot of people doing “serious AI and science” on $1000 rigs yeah?

The factual/“essentially factual” parts of this comment are disenfranchised by the hyperbole around the supposed lack of performance of M1, and the supposed performance of x86 at the $1000 price point.

Macs are about as upgradable as comparable laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft and all ultrabooks command a hefty premium these days, Apple-made or not.

Did TSMC or any other fab refuse to offer you the same terms as the Apple deal?

What's the barrier to competition? You not having money?