Report: Apple Considering Switch Away from Intel CPUs
Will Apple design its own chips for its Mac computers?
Apple is said to be considering a move that would see the company step away from Intel and towards its own solution for processors in its Mac computers. Bloomberg cites people familiar with the company’s research that say Apple is exploring ways to replace Intel processors with a version of the chip technology it uses in the iPhone and iPad.
Apple has been using Intel chips for the last seven years but its mobile devices have been powered by its own solutions for two and a half years. According to Bloomberg's sources, Apple engineers are confident that the chip will eventually be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops. Though it's not going to happen in the immediate future, Bloomberg's sources believe it's only a matter of time.
Apple debuted it's first custom chip in the form of the Apple A4, which powered the original iPad and later the iPhone 4, in 2010. A year later, the company introduced the A5, which powered the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S, and the fifth generation iPhone touch. The third generation iPad is based on the A5X, while the fourth generation tablet, released just last month, is based on the A6X. The iPhone 5 runs on a regular A6 chip.

ARM whatever won't even get near the same performance Intel or AMD can give you.
They can make only ARM chips. Added advantage : OSX for ARM incompatible with x86 hardware. So people who want new OS, have to buy new hardware.
EPIC WIN
Today, however, Apple really doesn't care about performance. The new desktop with an iPad CPU in it would have a brushed aluminium case, a glowing LED Apple logo, and millions of people will happily shell out $3000 for it even if it takes half an hour to open a .jpg
Just a thought.
ARM whatever won't even get near the same performance Intel or AMD can give you.
This is true - the move from PPC to x86 was painless because of the huge increase in performance from their old architecture to x86. Unfortunately, it will be a very painful and poor performance path. If I know Apple, they may not even include an x86 emulator and tell users to learn to love it.
It's looking increasingly like Apple is destined to return to the company it was in the 90's, only with today's tech (mobile devices) as it's bread and butter.
They license like other vendors ARM's architecture but then make changes to it with their engineering team to make something slightly different.
Regardless, this is nothing more than a rumor. If Apple is migrating away from x86-based processors/systems, I expect it won't be for quite some time still.