My understanding about Apple is that they keep key engineering pieces (like the CPUs and probably bus and memory controllers) in-house. All the rest is farmed out. So the Chinks can copy the rest but it won’t do them any good.
—”they keep key engineering pieces (like the CPUs and probably bus and memory controllers) in-house”
I had a relative that did failure analysis of ICs.
They would remove a minuscule layer(etch) then photograph and study all the many circuits...
Now you just know the Chinese lead the world in this type of reverse engineering. And there are a billion of them so they can throw some hours on the project.