Comment by criddell

Apple doesn't buy its manufacturing partners.

If you can make something with the quality Apple wants, they will buy you a manufacturing line in exchange for price, quality and production level guarantees.

Since Intel needs large customers for its Fab and capital investments, it would be a good deal for them even if the profit margin is much lower than they would prefer.

Apple really doesn't like to own manufacturing. They want to be in a position of a favored key customer, but still have the ability to switch vendors at a moment's notice if they can get a better deal.

Very surprising. It would be an unprecedented amount of responsibility for Apple to subsume when they could let the fed nationalize it and save a few billion dollars for a rainy day.