Apple aims for more control over technology

The iPad was not the only Apple product making its debut on Wednesday, with the company unveiling a significant new ingredient inside the device.

Apple usually avoids discussing the source of the internal components used in its products but it was clearly proud to declare that the iPad is powered by its first in-house microprocessor – the A4.

In a video shown at the event and now available on its website, Apple revealed the internal workings of the machine, while Bob Mansfield, head of hardware, described the battery and performance benefits its own technology was providing.

“We build battery technology, we build chip technology, we build software and we bring all those things together in a way that no one else can do it,” he said.

Apple’s use of its own-design processor demonstrates its intention to gain more control over what goes into its products, and so become less dependent on third-party manufacturers.

The advantages include making Apple’s technology even more proprietary and hard to copy, and keeping its plans secret from the industry at large.

Controlling both hardware and software also allows Apple to make them work better together in key areas such as performance and extending battery life.

Apple gained its hardware smarts with the $278m acquisition of Silicon Valley startup PA Semi in 2008. A team of veteran semiconductor engineers there had spent five years designing a low-power microprocessor. It is not clear whether the A4 uses a design based on one provided by the UK’s ARM, with ARM chips already running the iPhone and iPod touch. But Apple’s use of its own technology in the iPad is something of a blow to Intel, whose chips power Apple’s computers and whose low-power Atom microprocessor would have been a suitable candidate for the device.