Apple is in a much different state now. Making your own chip requires significant resources, and before they didn't have the leverage nor talent to get the chip

Apple is in a much different state now. Making your own chip requires significant resources, and before they didn't have the leverage nor talent to get the chips they wanted built. Now, they have a trillion dollar product (iPhone) and a mature chip development team that many consider the best in the industry, and they can throw tons of money at the problem. The benefit of running the same chips as everyone else was about leveraging the investment of other products into the Intel architecture. Now they're doing that, just with their own chips.