The Past & Future of the Apple platform

Few brands, especially one with its roots in home computing, enjoy the devoted user base which Apple does.

More than 1.1 million iPhones have been sold since its launch and Apple Inc has sold more computers this year than ever before, shifting 2,164,000 of the things in its fourth quarter of 2007 that closed at the end of September.

Many industry observers believe this is a result of a "halo effect" resulting from the iPod and now the iPhone. Apple computers are basking in the glory reflected from these much-hyped products.

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Apple boss Steve Jobs is a master salesman, you might not own any Apple products but unless you live in a cave you will certainly have heard of its latest devices.

"Apple is now huge," says Christopher Phin, deputy editor of UK Mac focused Mac Format magazine. "It's number three in US as far as desktop sales and laptop sales. It effectively controls the online music market at the moment, because we've got iTunes that controls something like 76% of online music sales."

"The perception is that Apple's changing. They've gone from being this small hippy company into a much more corporate entity and frankly, it always has been. Microsoft has never been that bad and Apple has never been that good."

Price range:

While Apple is enjoying a rise in sales, its machines still only account for 5% of the computer market, with PCs running Windows dominant. Its machines however, are have a reputation for being stylish and well designed, although Apple Inc has seen a recent surge in Mac sales.

If you didn't know, Apple's current line up of computers consists of laptops, which come in two flavours: entry level MacBooks and the gutsier more powerful MacBook Pros.

One criticism levelled at Apple has been its lack of focus on budget products. Mid-range and high-end users are well catered for but those on a budget have traditionally turned to PCs which tend to be cheaper.

That is what the Mac Mini is supposed to address. It comes without a screen or keyboard but it is the cheapest machine Apple makes.

Sticking with desktops there is the latest iteration of the iMac. The exterior has been styled to look more like a TV than a computer but there is method in the iMac designer's madness. The idea is that it would not look out of place as the entertainment hub in a living room.

And for the really high-end professional users there are the Mac Pro towers. Unlike the rest of the range, the hardware in these beasts, like PCs, is completely configurable to the user's specification.

Latest developments:

At the recent Mac Expo in London I was not expecting to find high-res computer games running on Macs, but now that Apple has adopted Intel chip sets, it is actually easier to port existing games from other formats over to the Mac.

In the coming months games publishers like Electronic Arts are planning to port more top titles over to this platform which is good news for Apple gamers.

Wandering around shows like this you always find interesting third-party products like Eye TV, which is a digital and analogue tuner. As well as recording, pausing and rewinding live analogue or digital TV signals, Eye TV can export any recorded video straight to other devices like video-enabled iPods and iPhones.

And if the computer it is attached to is online, video can be downloaded or streamed to mobile devices remotely via wi-fi.

Leopard 10.5:

The biggest recent news for Mac users is the Leopard operating system upgrade.
Apple reckons it has have added 300 new features. Just take a look at the reviews of Leopard and the Install guide right here on DailyTechTalk.com

Upgraded OS aside, what else have Steve Jobs' backroom boys got in store?

"We are expecting some new Macs possibly as early as November, revamping the MacBook range, smaller, lighter, more portable, possibly using some of the technologies that we've seen in the iPhone coming over to the Mac," says Mac Formats Chris Phin.

"And in January I wouldn't be surprised if Steve Jobs demos the second version of the iPhone, which, please God, [will have] 3G, GPS, certainly some more storage for goodness sake, because the iPhone is 8GB which is frankly very, very small."

So some new kit could be on its way. The Apple brand is probably stronger than it has ever been and the hype machine rolls on and on....