So many to choose from now...

[jmforge]

The thing that most people don't think about is that Apple is not a computer compnay and hasn't been arguably since the first iPod hit the shelves. They are a consumer electronics company. I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about how they do business and trying to guess what they will do next. So far I have had pretty good luck because I figured out one thing a few years ago. As much as Apple has always aqppealed to a certain geek crowd, it has not been COMPUTER geeks. It has been many other types of geeks like artists, graphic designers, musicians, etc. Computer geeks said early on that the iPad would never replace the laptop. i disagree. It WILL repalce the laptop if for no otherreason than the laptop has reaplced the desktop in many applications. I think that Apple's long term plan is twofold. First, i think that they are trying to "computerize" everything they can and the prognosticators seem to think that the big screen TV will be their next project. As for their devices, everything that they have done over the last 10 years leads me to believe that they are trying to get to a place where most of their devices are small, light, very portable, wireless, ridiculously simple and intuitive to use and have few, if any moving parts. I would not be at all surprisedif the next varaint of the MacBook Air is something more akin to an "iPod Pro" that uses a multi core "A6" chip and some hybrid iOS/OS X operating system

Until it doesn't work. We've migrated from Micro$oft at work to Apple for the hubby and Linux for me (no pads yet). Apple drives me nuts. If you don't think the way their programmers do, things can be a pain to find. And if you try to interface with non-apple products it can be trouble. Got hubby a Sansa MP3 player, and it puked when songs downloaded via the Apple. Took a while to figure it out--the way Apple stores files (with a hidden file in addition to the music file file) was the culprit. Since Apple is Unix-based, it was possible to write a script to clean up things and get the Sansa working, but it was painful.