Mac at 25: What's next for Apple's Mac?
Twenty-five years after the debut of the Macintosh, the product that is the soul of Apple is not necessarily its vehicle to the future.
 These days, Apple is in a very different place. The company sold 10 times as many iPods and iPhones in its first fiscal quarter as it did Macs; and it was a great year for the Mac. CEO Steve Jobs was so aware of this transformation in recent years that he announced in January 2007 that Apple Computer was no more; it's Apple Inc. these days. More and more, it seems the iPhone is the future of Apple. Or, at least, the cutting-edge technology inside Apple, the project that everybody wants to work on, and that competitors strive to emulate. So what does that mean for the Mac over the next quarter century? In all honesty, few of us know. Certainly it would have been difficult for most people in the late 1980s watching Michael Douglas in Wall Street talk into a "mobile" phone the size of Shaquille O'Neal's basketball shoe to envision using a sleek handheld phone with all the computing power of the PCs of the day, and then some. But the Mac is still very much part of Apple's mission: It ends every press release with the stock paragraph declaring that "Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications". So let's consider the near-term future of the Mac; say five to 10 years from today. Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Macintosh, PC, Apple iLife, computer |
- Talkback
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Devlin says...
There is no denying that the Mac is a mature product. I happen to be one of those people that are always taken in by newer technology (both hardware and software), but after owning my MacBook Pro which happens to be my second Mac the newer unibody Macs don't do it for me anymore. Now it's more about aesthetics to me and how I prefer my last generation MBP and 1st gen iPhone over the current offerings because of their mostly metal bodies.
That is not to say I won't purchase another Mac, now it'll only be after my current one dies which I hope is well into the next generation.
There is no telling what can happen in a quarter century but for the immediate future, at least, these are what I think we'll be seeing in Macs to come:
1. Solid-State Drives offered as standard equipment
2. Blu-Ray drives
3. HD resolution on the 15" MacBook Pro (and possibly the MacBook after that)
4. Higher resolution iSight camera
5. Multitouch screens in conjunction with multitouch touchpads
Jan 29, 2009 17:55
There is no denying that the Mac is a mature product. I happen to be one of those people that are always taken in by newer technology (both hardware and software), but after owning my MacBook Pro which happens to be my second Mac the newer unibody Macs don't do it for me anymore. Now it's more about aesthetics to me and how I prefer my last generation MBP and 1st gen iPhone over the current offerings because of their mostly metal bodies.
That is not to say I won't purchase another Mac, now it'll only be after my current one dies which I hope is well into the next generation.
There is no telling what can happen in a quarter century but for the immediate future, at least, these are what I think we'll be seeing in Macs to come:
1. Solid-State Drives offered as standard equipment
2. Blu-Ray drives
3. HD resolution on the 15" MacBook Pro (and possibly the MacBook after that)
4. Higher resolution iSight camera
5. Multitouch screens in conjunction with multitouch touchpads
Jan 29, 2009 17:55
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