You didn't get that IRMA board from Apple, did you?
What does that have to do with it? IBM didn't get that IRMA board from IBM either. It was necessary for IBM to have their PCs talking to their mainframes. IRMA was supplied by DCA, Inc., not made by IBM, and their boards were made for both PCs and Macs. I used to integrate different machines to connect to mainframes and terminals, much of it not being IBM. That included Wang, IVPhase, DEC and Apple (several models including Newtons). Back then it wasn't all IBM.