When the microcomputer first landed in homes some forty years ago, it came with a simple freedom—you could run whatever software you could get your hands on. Floppy disk from a friend? Pop it in. Shareware demo downloaded from a BBS? Go ahead! Dodgy code you wrote yourself at 2 AM? Absolutely. The computer you bought was yours. It would run whatever you told it to run, and ask no questions.
Today, that freedom is dying. What’s worse, is it’s happening so gradually that most people haven’t noticed we’re already halfway into the coffin.
Apple used non-x86 processors far longer than x86, which was barely 14 years - only 2 years longer than they used PPC.
Chromebooks also started on ARM and x86.
Neither are/were propping up x86 in any significant way. Apple’s choice of Intel CPUs were always oddball low-power variants, anyway, like the i5-4308U in my old Mac Mini. It’s a 2c4t laptop CPU at best.