Opinion: What next for Apple?

Apple stands at somewhat of a turning point in the company’s long and turbulent history. It’s hard to believe that not long ago, most industry experts were writing the company off, and now they stand tall as the fourth largest supplier of personal computers in the US. The iPod-fuelled revolution seems to have finally made it to Apple’s core business and now its computer arm is thriving as well as the music division, silencing all but the strongest of critics. But it’s what lays ahead for Apple that is the most interesting part of this story, because for the first time in a very long time, the Company has a clear and open road ahead of it.

What do I mean by that? Well, for some time, Apple has been going through a transition of one form or another. First it was the OS9 to OSX Move. A substantial transition that put many purchase decisions on hold, and the engineering efforts impacted on products far and wide. Then there was the G4 Fiasco. Apple had a potentially stellar architecture from Motorola that quickly went nowhere. Performance advantages of the G4 promptly turned into a slow languishing death, as they remained stuck at 500mhz while Intel ploughed through the 1ghz barrier. This led to some creative marketing spin with the whole megahertz myth campaign. And as software vendors began to finally optimise their applications for the G4’s powerful vector processing unit, Apple had to move once again to the G5.

The G5 represented another significant architecture shift that once again required substantial investment from software developers to take advantage of the Platform. And once again, just as the dust began to settle, the company was left with no choice to jump “chip�? again. And while there was much hesitation from many Mac stalwarts at the time, on hindsight it seems like the best, even the only possible solution for their problems. With Intel they have a chip and architecture that even if there are some small bumps ahead, will unlikely require a change again any time soon.

So now with the Intel transition complete and the company’s Mac division firing on all cylinders, they can focus all their energy on product design and not be distracted by constantly having to shift their efforts with architecture and platform shifts every few years. More importantly, hopefully after this, third party developers won’t have to rewrite their software again either.

But what about the future for Apple themselves? Where do they go from here? With an increased market share and an even bigger reputation they can continue to push the boundaries of design and innovation. And I would expect the first fruits of this out next year with redesigned products. It seems only logical that the first machines using the Intel architecture would resemble the previous incarnations as much as possible. After all, they spent the last few years fostering open hostility towards the chip giant amongst its user base, so not wanting to scare them off was probably top of the priority list for any new hardware.

The notable exception of course being the macbook. The slick little laptop has undoubtedly contributed to the companies staggering growth in portable sales, and offered a pleasing departure from the iBook it replaced, as well as some nifty features, like the easy to replace ram and hard drives. I suspect these will make the move to the macbook pro in it’s next revision.
Hopefully too Apple will be able to branch out a bit in their product offerings. It’s ironic that the company has constantly been labelled a niche player, when for the last several years they have only made mainstream products. It was Steve Jobs mercilessly trimming the product line when he returned to Apple that probably saved the company, but if their success continues, they can probably afford to branch out again.

One thing that they must surely be looking at (denials from company execs aside) is a sub-notebook. It currently is the one gaping hole in the company’s product line-up. And while the macbook is a small system, the ultra light portable range from other vendors, is quite popular if somewhat over priced. A 10�? version of the macbook would be a fantastic addition to the Apple product range, and in my opinion is badly needed. Other fantasy Mac devices, like an Apple tablet seem less likely. The Tablet PC seems like one of those solutions looking for a problem, and I doubt Apple will ever go there. An apple branded PDA also seems unlikely, but any Apple iPhone could feature PDA like features.

Whatever they do next, Apple will continue to set trends for the rest of the industry. Their Product announcements will always arrive with fanfare and pomp and they will undoubtedly continue to introduce something so obviously simple you’ll scratch your head and wonder why you hadn’t thought of it.

2007 Could be a very interesting year to be a mac user.

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