But you can outsource in a strategic way, right? Like McDonalds, and KFC, with their seasonings - no one vendor knows all the ingredients or their quantities. Didn't Apple take a similar path with the iPod and then the iPhone? They rolled one critical aspect of the product themselves - the software - but the competitive advantage of the hardware was strategically outsourced.
the competitive advantage of the apple hardware lies in the design, not the actual manufacturing of it.
Sure, but if it was as simple as ordering parts from vendors couldn't anyone reconstruct either product on the hardware side?
They can and do, for the most part. iPhone knockoffs are a dime a dozen, for the most part, although Apple has design patents to keep them from looking too close to they original.