Asking wouldn’t have been enough. They also would have to do it, for a fairly small fraction of the CPUs they build (Apple sells about 30 million systems a year in a total market of 340 million (https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021), and that excludes CPUs running in data centers).

I’m not sure adding “and, by the way, we’ll switch manufacturers at will if we can get faster gear elsewhere” will help there.