BobtheWrecker

They were, though. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, Apple was working on what would become the Newton MessagePad. They initially wanted to use the AT&T Hobbit CPU, but eventually sent out Larry Tesler (the man who had previously worked at Xerox, and invented the concept of copy-pasting) to find a good alternative option. They eventually settled on the British computer company Acorn's ARM design. Acorn wanted to spin off ARM, so Apple came in at an opportune time to start a joint venture with Acorn and VLSI (a chip maker that worked with both Apple and Acorn). It helped ARM gain a foothold in the market, now that a big US company was involved. However, Apple sold its shares over the 90s, as it was nearing bankruptcy. That money kept the doors open, and probably also partially financed the NeXT buyout which brought back Steve Jobs, and the NeXTStep technologies that would be integrated into the Mac OS with OS X. As for them, bugger all will change. They have a perpetual ISA license, and that's all they need. They won't need to knock on NVIDIA's door for new licenses for core designs, as they do that themselves. NVIDIA would be insane to try and be petty towards Apple, as it could decimate them in the courts.