For example, it was a big deal when they moved from IBM/Motorola to Intel, and Macs started getting much faster right away. A decade later and Intel is struggling to keep up at the high end, woefully behind in low-power contexts, and Apple is again hamstrung in their plans.

So at some point they decided to make their own chips. Well, to design them, and to use their leverage with TMSC to get them made exclusively. It’s true that they have fewer dependencies than a more general-purpose manufacturer like Intel, but don’t discount the many years they’ve spent eating shit while waiting for their “partners” to catch up. In the CPU space, they’ll never do that again.