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How Apple’s careful control will bring even bigger things
During Apple’s recent Q3 financial results call last week, one analyst posed an interesting question to Tim Cook: how does Apple decide which technologies it wants to build itself, as opposed to simply buying off the shelf?
Apple’s fixation on control is legendary. From the earliest days, the company prided itself on building the whole widget, hardware, and software, in an age where those two were becoming increasingly decoupled. Even today, it remains arguably the defining characteristic of the company. Just compare it to its main rivals in the smartphone or PC market.
As Apple has become larger and more successful, that focus on control over the whole widget has gotten even broader. The company’s been building its own processors for mobile devices for more than a decade, and those advancements have finally jumped to the Mac. On the other end, Apple has introduced more and more services that help provide the glue between those traditional hardware and software components. This trend isn’t about to stop any time soon; there are plenty of places where the company has decided to move its core technologies in-house.