I don&#x27;t think this holds water at all.<p>The crux of the article is:<p>&gt; ...one last gap remains in the middle of this stack of system exclusivity: Apple licenses the instruction set architecture for its mobile devices from ARM.<p>But Apple already not only designs the own SoCs independently already, they regularly add their own opcodes to the ARM instruction sets they license, as they see fit.<p>The alternative to <i>not</i> licensing from ARM, even if they &quot;invented their own ISA&quot;,  would be to pay an exorbitant sum in royalties to ARM <i>and</i> every other patent-holder whose technology they might dare use in their chip. So paying ARM for their technology in one go just makes the most economical&#x2F;legal sense.