> not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab

Isn’t running a fab only while it makes top of the line chips a bad idea because you can still make good money from it in later years?

If so, I think they, _if_ they ever want to own a fab (unlikely, IMO), they’ll want to accept outside customers for it when it has stopped being best-in-the-world.