You have a more sophisticated knowledge of the situation but I have been saying exactly that about Apple and posting it to the Apple fan boys here. What you have laid out is what I strongly suspected. The fan boys exaggerate how much Apple does in house. I told them the Taiwanese are the geniuses of the laptop, the cell phone and the motherboard. And that Apple had some serious Taiwanese partners who are are doing the bulk of the R&D and do 100% the manufacturing in their mianland Chinese factories
What does Apple in Cupertino do? They come up with concepts, marketing and distribution. They maintain the mystique that gets people to fork out gobs of cash for overpriced products. Cupertino is the hype machine. Sure there is some R&D and engineering in Cupertino but most goes on in Taiwan by the CM partners
Quote all the nonsense you want, the reality is people buy because they have to, or they have disposable income to buy something they want. It would be a rare person that had to buy an Apple product, so what do you suppose is the reason they would?