Editorial was poorly written. It doesn't even break the ice over the fact that Apple and Dell are PC/consumer device assemblers, whereas AMD is a silicon manufacturer - almost wholly separate industries requiring different expertise. At the surface it doesn't look strategic at all.
There's no accounting for the scenario that AMD develops chips inferior to Intel's (historically at the process, not architectural level) - wouldn't that put Apple in worse position than simply leaving AMD alone?
Jobs is an interesting executive and can probably pull off things we don't imagine, but I doubt we would be the first ones seeing the light in taking over AMD. A decade ago Apple was hardly bigger than AMD-ATI in terms of revenue, stock value, or cash on hand/assets. Losses were staggering and bankruptcy/acquisition rumors were ubiquitous - a similar position to AMD today. Jobs turned all that around, but the difference is he co-founded Apple and basically grew up with it. All along his company has left it to others to do the nitty-gritty manufacturing.