Why does Apple need to be independent? How would be in Apple's best interests to take on the massive overhead of being a CPU manufacturer?
I'm not even convinced that it would be in Apple's best interests to be in the graphics hardware business either, but at least that doesn't entail owning a fab. Neither nVidia nor ATI fabricated their own chips, they contracted that work out to foundries like Chartered and UMC. Owning a fabless graphics hardware developer might work out for Apple, but I'm a bit skeptical about that. I'm also not convinced that it was a wise purchase for AMD though.
I'm not even convinced that it would be in Apple's best interests to be in the graphics hardware business either, but at least that doesn't entail owning a fab. Neither nVidia nor ATI fabricated their own chips, they contracted that work out to foundries like Chartered and UMC. Owning a fabless graphics hardware developer might work out for Apple, but I'm a bit skeptical about that. I'm also not convinced that it was a wise purchase for AMD though.