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If Apple Can Make Its Own iPad Silicon, Could In-House Mac CPUs Be Next?

Forbes' Lee Gomes notes that the future trajectory of the semiconductor industry is to some degree riding on the success of the iPad, whose A4 microprocessor "system-on-a-chip" silicon was partly designed in-house by Apple, most likely using expertise acquired via the company's 2008 acquisition of Silicon Valley start-up PA Semi. Forbes thinks that if the iPad proves a marketing hit it might encourage Apple to consider making its own CPUs for Mac systems as well and thus could forgo paying the so-called "Intel tax."

While it's an intriguing line of speculation, Apple would want to proceed very cautiously, given that a major consideration would have to be continued compatibility with the Windows universe, which has been facilitated greatly by Apple's adoption of Intel CPUs in its computer systems, which not coincidentally coincided with a dramatic reversal in Apple's market performance in terms of Mac systems sales.

Apple Matters' Chris Seibold notes that the arguments in favor of going in-house with Mac CPUs would be abundant, including :more control, more profits, and a chip expressly designed for Macs, all of which may seem good at face value but could backfire royally if the Mac's surge in popularity over the past four years has been based substantially on Intel X86 compatibility.

ZNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes thinks it's not so much "Intel Inside" that's selling so many more Macs these days, but more to do with the Windows compatibility that comes with Intel silicon.

I'm inclined to agree with both Seibold and Kingsley-Hughes, who are not really taking contradictory positions. Windows compatibility comes with Intel compatibility, and it it pretty difficult to rationalize away the correlation between the ability to run Windows natively on the Mac with excellent performance (or as good as you get with Windows) and an approximate quadrupling of Apple's share of the PC market since 2006.

Better to focus in-house chip development efforts on the iPhone, iPod and soon-to-be iPad universe, where Apple is already dominant than to risk the Mac's continued ascendency in the PC orbit by dropping Intel inside.