The dark satanic rumour mill is claiming that Apple is going to design computer chips for its own gear as early as next year. The rumours follow the recruitment of chip designers to its light and frothy team at Cappuccino. While the fan boys are rejoicing at the prospect of yet another bit of kit that Jobs' Mob will put out, the move covers something a lot darker.

Since its inception Apple has been even more pathological about its proprietary nature than Microsoft. Generally this has been bad for its customers and created issues like lock ins, ties to less than great phone dealers, you name it. Apple is everything that is bad about proprietary models.

If Apple creates its own chips it can only be for one purpose. To create Apple-only features and keep its  product plans secret from its competitors. True Apple may be looking to improve with its own chips include energy efficiency, graphics capability for gaming and high definition video, handwriting technology, and display management. However it also means that how these work will be kept secret from its users. A person cannot write a program for Apple unless they know how the chip works, if Apple controls this then it also controls every aspect of production.

Apple hates having to use outside suppliers. It likes the cost reduction aspect, which means it can have ridiculous mark ups on its gear, but it hates the chance that one of its partners might leak product details to the media. Why does that matter. It doesn't really, but it is an expression of the psychologically unbalanced nature of Apple's secrecy. Getting news about a product is usually considered a good thing, however Apple is so anal about control it wants products only released when it says so.

Apple is concerned that technology developed for Apple by a third-party could be sold to Apple's competitors. The Merom-based chip Intel developed for the MacBook Air is one example. Intel flogged another reduced-size processor shortly after the MacBook Air debuted in 2008.
So if Apple is going into the chip business it is not something that people should be happy about.  It could mean that they do even less with their expensive gear than they can now.