> And as for Apple itself, they had built the first iPhone on top of ARM to begin with (partially because Intel didn’t see a market). So they were already familiar with ARM before they even started building ARM CPUs
As a co-founder of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, Apple had a history with ARM dating back to 1990 at least:
> Arm was officially founded as a company in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, which was a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and VLSI Technology (now NXP Semiconductors N.V)
Yes I’m aware. But ARM from then vs the one that was in phones shares little in terms of useful experience. iPhone is where the partnership became strategically important for Apple.
> ARM from then vs the one that was in phones shares little in terms of useful experience
There seems to be a fair amount of continuity.
For example, Acorn's RISC OS (1987 onward) was ported to the modern Raspberry Pi, and you can still write ARM assembly language in your BBC BASIC programs on RISCOS for the Pi.
As a co-founder of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, Apple had a history with ARM dating back to 1990 at least:
> Arm was officially founded as a company in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, which was a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and VLSI Technology (now NXP Semiconductors N.V)
https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/arm-official-history
Apple also shipped ARM-based Newton systems from 1993-98, and ARM-based iPods starting in 2001.