There’s no dispute that the lack of serious Mac refreshes this year can be blamed on Intel. The new Broadwell chip family, using 14 nanometer dies, is late to the party. The chips that Apple requires for Macs aren’t available yet, and that may push those refreshes off to 2015. So to make do, Apple is using slightly faster chips from the previous generation, Haswell, to convey the impression of a speed bump. The combination of slightly lower prices and slightly better performance makes the recent MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina display upgrades pretty good values overall.

Clearly customers approve, since Mac sales growth continues to outpace the industry.

Now the last time a chip manufacturer didn’t deliver the goods to Apple, a wholesale processor switch followed. That happened in 2005, when the PowerPC G5 stagnated, with no note-book version in sight. Windows PCs with Intel Inside were speeding past Macs, so Apple went with Intel.

That transition was quite smooth, since Apple had been developing an Intel version of OS X for several years in case a move became necessary. So new Macs sold in far greater quantities, and it didn’t hurt that you could run Windows software at good speed via virtualization or at full speed via Boot Camp.

Since then, Apple has established their own processor design facility, and the 64-bit A7, based on the ARM architecture, has been a revelation. After misleading claims from some tech pundits that there was no need for 64-bit on a mobile platform yet, the performance of the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display proved otherwise.

But that’s a low-power chip designed to perform well in an environment where resource use has to be carefully managed. What if the A7 and its successors were scaled up to operate in a note-book or desktop personal computer? That the A7 was classified as a desktop class processor may be the hint that has helped fuel the Mac on ARM theory.

It goes like this: In the tradition of Steve Jobs, Apple wants to control everything, and building custom chips is only one part of the picture. Clearly that strategy has worked. So here we have Intel not being able to deliver the parts on time. What’s more, an ARM processor costs far less to build, in part because of design efficiencies and not being weighed down by the legacy x86 architecture that stagnates development of Intel’s chips, in part to stay compatible with older Windows apps and operating systems.

If an ARM processor can come close to the performance of an Intel chip — and that’s a huge if — Apple would still benefit from the lower design and fabrication costs. The prices of new Macs could be reduced by hundreds of dollars, particularly at the high end where some of those Intel i7 chips cost more than $500, each. Apple also has past experience moving to new processor platforms, so isn’t this a win for all concerned?

The theory sounds promising, but there’s a severe limitation that’s rarely mentioned. There are tens of thousands of existing Intel-based apps that would have to be translated or emulated in a new chip architecture. When Apple went to PowerPC, they had an emulator that was mostly compatible with existing apps, although performance suffered at first. A key part of the Intel migration was Rosetta, which allowed you to use PowerPC apps on an Intel-based Mac; it was discontinued with the release of OS X Lion in 2012. Apple clearly believed six years was long enough for you to upgrade or replace your legacy PowerPC apps, although that’s still not entirely true.

So if Apple goes to ARM, they would have to provide simple conversion tools or the ability to create “fat binary” apps that would work on Intel and ARM. There would also have to be some sort of virtualization capability so your Mac would still look and work the same as now, regardless of whether the app was built for Intel or ARM.

How would Apple accomplish that virtualization feat? Well, consider the new Metal architecture of iOS 8, which allows the CPU and GPU to “work together to achieve optimal performance.” Right now, Metal is designed to make games run much faster. But what if Metal could be tailored to provide Intel virtualization on an ARM-based Mac? Would that afford a level of performance that would be close to or identical to a native Intel chip?

Now I do not presume to know enough about the technology to claim that a Metal virtualization alternative is workable and would deliver competitive performance and superior compatibility. But it’s also clear that Apple doesn’t show its full deck of cards, and using Metal for gaming may only be the beginning.

Certainly harnessing the power of graphics chips to enhance computing is nothing new. Apple’s OpenCL technology is really exploited on the new Mac Pro, which contains workstation-class AMD FirePro graphics, to perform advanced 3D rendering and complex scientific calculations.

While I don’t know the future possibilities of moving Macs to ARM, I have little doubt that such Macs are currently being tested in the development labs. But it’s not just about control of the platform; it’s still Intel’s game to lose. If the Broadwell and future chip designs continue to run late, you can bet Apple won’t stand still.

Sounds promising, but an ARM switch wouldn’t be a cakewalk for Apple. Performance and virtualization will remain the key obstacles, and, despite some speculation on my part, I wouldn’t presume to guess how both issues will be resolved. It is also possible the stumbles in Intel’s current processor roadmap will soon be resolved, thus reducing the possibility of a move to ARM.

Aside from that offhand remark from a long-term client to Apple’s demonstration of OS X Yosemite — “Yuk! — the response to the developer and public beta releases has been mostly positive. Clearly Apple has worked hard to deliver reasonably reliable early seeds with most features mostly functional. It’s also stable enough not to come crashing down over every little function.

With Windows 8, Microsoft’s marketing and engineering teams were clearly asleep at the wheel. They didn’t listen to what the public really wanted — or needed for that matter — and deluded themselves into believing that the tiled interfaces of the failed Zune music players and the stagnant Windows Phone platform would somehow succeed in a traditional personal computing environment.

Well, perhaps for consumers, although they don’t seem to like it either. But the most significant part of Microsoft’s business is the enterprise, and the IT people weren’t listening then or now. Those who aren’t simply struggling to keep Windows XP boxes running after Microsoft withdrew support earlier this year, have migrated to Windows 7. Windows 8? Windows 8.1? Not so much!

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Paranoia strikes deep in today’s society. Governments aren’t believed, and there is a conspiracy theory behind almost everything. Any significant world event has multiple meanings, and there is always the feeling we aren’t being told everything.

Certainly profit-making corporations aren’t to be believed. The message, whatever it might be, is designed to entice you to buy a product or service. Competition is fierce, and bending the facts — or simply lying — to fit the marketing plan is par for the course. When a company depends on regular upgrades to keep sales running at a good clip, you expect they will pull stunts to get you to dump the old gear.

Indeed, it may well be that the reason iPad sales have declined is that Apple hasn’t made a good case for you to upgrade. You can take the original iPad, forgetting for the moment that current apps and iOS 7 aren’t supported, and it will continue to do its thing without protest for year after year. Indeed, some iPads are used in the business world for dedicated functions, so updating is rare unless a custom app requires it.

Now I suppose releasing an OS upgrade that leaves older hardware behind is one way to entice you to buy new gear. It’s also reasonable to suppose that the decision not to support certain models is done for marketing reasons rather than simply because the new OS won’t work so well on slower hardware. I suppose one can hack OS X or iOS and somehow induce it to install on unsupported gear, but you may see then the wisdom of Apple’s position.

Don’t forget that, when iOS 7 came out, you could install it on an iPhone 4. But those who did complained of subpar performance, including slow launch times and glacial response. Apple did tune iOS 7 to make it snappier on that iPhone, but the handwriting was on the wall. You can’t install iOS 8 on an iPhone 4. Besides, some new features will not work on the older models, but eventually those old models are set aside.

At least Apple lets you update iOS and OS X annually. Try to get a timely upgrade on an Android phone, and you’ll be very lucky if that ever happens, even if a critical security patch is involved.

For the Mac, OS X Yosemite supports the same models as Mavericks and, for that matter, Lion. That covers Macs built as far back in 2007 in some cases. Some features won’t work. Right now, based on published reports, Yosemite’s highly-touted Handoff feature — allowing you to pick up an email or document where you left off on another Apple device — only supports Bluetooth LE. But Macs built before 2011 or 2012 (depending on the model) don’t support that feature.

Maybe this will be addressed by supporting third-party Bluetooth LE USB adapters, or maybe not. But that doesn’t mean Apple should not have developed this feature. If they took that attitude there would be no Handoff and other compelling features. Apple has to be forward looking.

One ill-informed commentator for a major newspaper of record suggested that there was some plot by Apple to deliberately slow down an iPhone just ahead of the release of a new model. Supposedly this was done with some sort of software update that somehow delivered this effect. It doesn’t matter that there really isn’t any evidence that such a plot is being foisted on an unsuspecting public. It was all about getting hits because Apple was mentioned in the headline.

As a practical matter, Apple wants to sell you more gear. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s really no proof that OS upgrades are thus designed to deliberately disable features on older hardware, or not to support other models. The march of technology isn’t going to stop to maintain full backwards compatibility. To avoid that nasty truth would mean that newer hardware couldn’t exploit the latest and greatest OS and app features, and that would basically stall the development of these platforms.

More to the point: Unlike other companies, new OS upgrades from Apple aren’t always slower than previous releases. With Mavericks, for example, Apple actually helped improve efficiencies and power management. So your Mac seemed a tad snappier, and note-books had longer battery life. iOS 7 didn’t seem to slow down the iPhones and iPads on which I tested it — I didn’t have access to an iPhone 4. But the zooming effects by themselves would create the impression of slower response, but those effects can be turned off if you don’t like them.

The long and short of it is that I do not believe that Apple is engaged in any plot to cripple hardware or pull other stunts to make you buy new gear. On the other hand, by making it difficult if not impossible for you to upgrade your Android smartphone or tablet to a newer version of Google’s OS, does that encourage you to buy a new gadget? Or are you disgusted that you cannot take advantage of the latest and greatest features?

But I don’t think that’s necessarily Google’s plot to get you to buy new stuff. It’s more about a disorganized platform, and the inability to get handset makers and wireless carriers on the same page to set up a workable OS patching system.

Apple is between a rock and a hard place and it’s all Intel’s fault. Yes, it was the right thing to cast its lot with Intel when PowerPC processor development stalled. The Mac was falling behind Windows PCs, and the promised G5 chip for note-books never arrived. And I haven’t begun to mention those Power Mac G5s that required liquid cooling because they ran so hot.

So when the first Macs with Intel Inside appeared in 2006, it was a revelation. Performance improved at a good clip, and the teething problems were few. The worst issue for most was the tendency for those first MacBook Pro note-books to run too hot.

In recent years, though, performance improvements for Intel chips have been modest. Sure, Intel’s slow integrated graphics have become less slow and are pretty decent overall, but the largest change was improved power efficiency. That has allowed for all-day service on Apple’s note-books without having to plug them in.

The Mac refresh routine has been fairly consistent. Intel releases a new chip family each year, and there are corresponding updates to most Macs. There have been exceptions, such as the Mac Pro which uses the Xeon server-grade chips and the lowly Mac mini, which hasn’t seen an update since 2012.

Unfortunately, Intel’s development schedule has hit roadblocks, and the Broadwell chips are running extremely late. Some low-power versions were slated to ship this summer, but the ones that Apple uses may not come out until the end of the year, or early next year. This pushes major Mac speed bumps to 2015, but Apple shouldn’t be expected to wait.

Their solution was to take slightly faster chips from the Haswell family and issue minor refreshes for the MacBook Air and the MacBook pro families. The former also benefitted from $100 price cuts. With the MacBook Pro, Apple’s plan was to double installed memory on most configurations, and only reduce the price of the high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro configuration, which already had 16GB installed.

Benchmarks of the new versus the old show slight improvements, but you’d need a stopwatch to demonstrate the faster speeds for most functions. By offering more value for your money, though, Apple has succeeded in growing the Mac platform at a faster rate than other hardware, even the iPhone. So sales increased by 18% in the June quarter, although both Gartner and IDC erroneously claimed that Mac sales declined in the U.S. That error remains uncorrected, even though Apple reported double-digit sales growth in this country. So it seems the survey organizations will stand by their numbers however wrong they might be.

In any case, Apple has managed to make the best of a bad situation, and it’s not as if they can easily move to a different processor platform. AMD, for example, lags behind Intel in performance, although their chips are undeniably cheaper in many cases. But AMD is at least compatible with Intel.

The other option for Apple might be ARM, and Apple has plenty of expertise designing custom chips for the iPhone and the iPad. The A7 is 64-bit, and newer versions could possibly be developed in a more powerful form, more power hungry, for use in desktops and note-books. But performance would still lag behind current Intel parts, although I suppose that difference might be reduced over time. That Apple is leveraging the power of graphic chips for normal computing functions helps.

Certainly there have been ongoing rumors that Apple is planning on building an ARM-based MacBook some time in the future. I presume such prototypes already exist, and Apple would continue to seek alternatives if Intel doesn’t deliver the goods.

But an ARM-based Mac, even if performance was comparable to Intel hardware, would be a difficult move. There are all those legacy Intel apps that would have to be ported to ARM, and Apple would, as before with processor transitions, have to devise a method to translate older apps until they are updated. If that could be done with little or no performance loss, perhaps it would make sense, though such a transition might take a couple of years to complete. And what about the Mac Pro?

In the meantime, the Mac is doing quite nicely at a time when you might have expected sales to stagnate or drop slightly. The Continuity integration between OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 is yet another step to encourage you to buy into both platforms. That will also help boost Mac sales.

Besides, today’s Macs are quite fast enough for most people. Those who need the cutting-edge get it with the Mac Pro. Even the aging Mac mini can perform credibly, particularly when equipped with a solid state drive. Obviously the public is responding and, by and large, not focusing on modest speed boosts that may have little impact on their daily routine.

But lowering the price of flash storage would do wonders. Paying up to $800 for a 1TB flash upgrade on the newest MacBook Pro with Retina display seems pretty outrageous, particularly since you can buy drives with that capacity for less than half that price from other companies.