That's a very slippery argument. It's pretty obvious that without Darwin, there still would have eventually been a theory of evolution (as seen be Alfred Wallace's work), but Darwin gets credit for being first. Similarly, it's not at all obvious that without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no C. I'm sure eventually somebody would have created a similar language, but Ritchie made it happen first, so he deserves credit.

Sure, Intel may have eventually come up with ultra-efficient CPUs without Apple, but the point is that Apple helped make it happen.

To be clear, I'm not comparing a CPU design to the works of Darwin or Ritchie. I'm simply saying that arguing that an invention would have occurred even without the inventor could be said for anything.