What has Intel been doing all these years?

"As big as Intel and the other chip giants are, they're not as big as Apple"

Yes, but Intel's business is making chips. I doubt Apple spent more money than Intel on building chipsets.

I'm guessing what happened is that Apple offered Intel engineers a decent package and salary to leave and work for them instead. I'm also guessing that Intel were not willing to offer the same salary or better.

Hopefully Intel will learn a lesson.

“It's not that Intel couldn't have made a chip like the M1, it's just that we probably wouldn't have paid for it.”

I have serious doubts about the validity of this statement. I do not think Intel could do it at all.

Intel is becoming the next inefficient big thing.

Generating cash flow return on investments.