#011: Owning the Whole Widget Costs Extra
Apple rebuilt Face ID and the Watch's silicon, then spent ten days patching reboots. The same week, a jury billed it $5.7 billion for a part it has shipped since the first Apple Watch. Owning every layer means owning every failure.
Apple rebuilt Face ID and the Watch's silicon, then spent ten days patching reboots. The same week, a jury billed it $5.7 billion for a part it has shipped since the first Apple Watch. Owning every layer means owning every failure.
Apple's favorite argument for itself is that it owns the whole widget. This month it got the itemized bill.
On September 18, Apple shipped the most heavily rebuilt devices of the generation. iPhone 18 Pro moved Face ID's infrared camera beneath the display for the first time. Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 arrived with new S11 silicon and upgraded health sensors. Within days, both were rebooting on their own: the iPhone when a failed Face ID retry hit a protected app, the Watch when its Neural Engine timed out mid-workout, mid-Siri request, or sitting idle. Within ten days of launch, Apple had shipped point releases for both, watchOS 27.0.1 on September 23 and iOS 27.0.1 on September 28.
Then, on September 25, a San Diego jury ruled that the Taptic Engine, a component Apple has shipped since the first Apple Watch, infringed two patents held by a small haptics firm called Taction. The award was $5.72 billion. Apple says it will appeal, and the figure will almost certainly shrink.
These look like unrelated stories. They aren't. Designing the sensor, the chip, and the software together is the reason Face ID can disappear under glass at all, and it's Apple's best case for its prices. The same integration means there is no supplier to blame when a redesigned part fails on launch week, and no supplier to share the liability when a decade-old part lands in court. Every layer Apple owns is a layer Apple answers for.
John Ternus built his career inside that hardware. His first month as CEO is the first time its bills arrived addressed to him.
The next test ships in mid-October, when iPhone Duo puts Apple's first hinge in customers' hands. Its first point release will say more than the reviews.