Apple's designs are, well, elegant. There is no better word for it. Sony and Toshiba can come close at times, but, on average, Apple has the best designed hardware from an aesthetic's point of view of any vendor. It is amazing that, after several years, no one has been able to design a better hard-drive-based MP3 player than Apple did with iPod. Even Toshiba's design, which used many of the same components, failed. Sometimes, it's the little things. For instance, I went to the Apple store in New York and I look at the laptop hinges on the new PowerBooks and iBooks, you'll see the way screens should be attached to laptops. The screen opens out and down, minimizing the height of the open laptop and making it much more practical for airplane use. The hinge itself is not only robust, but also protected, so it would be difficult to break it. The end result is like a Porsche design in a good year, clean, understated and elegant.
[...] Worldwide PC Market Share Company Market share(%) Dell 18,1 HP 15,6 Lenovo 6,2 Acer 4,7 Fujitsu 4,1 Toshiba 3,5 NEC 2,9 Apple 2,2 Gateway 2,2 Sony 1,6 Source: IDC 2006b This table shows us the worldwide Pc market share in 2005. Dell and HP are the leaders of the market followed by Lenovo and Acer. Apple has just market share but has a pricing strategy which allows it to have high profit. The fastest growing product categories are notebooks and various handheld devices, as the cost of key technologies such as displays has fallen and customers desire more mobile products. [...]
[...] We could consider that he really solved Apple when he came back because he decided to redesign the range of products. Indeed, he launched the I-Book, first Apple's computer which had a really success. Thanks to partnerships created with Microsoft and Intel, he arrived to launch a product adapted to everybody. Indeed, it is easy to use; it is compatible with peripherals like printing whereas oldest Apple computers weren't. He also created the IPod, which represents the third of the turnover. [...]
[...] The expensive, exclusive character of Apple under Sculley-Gassée, followed by rudderless drifting under CEO Michael Spindler, resulted in a company that was in fantastically bad shape by the time CEO Gil Amelio was handed the reigns. Amelio had turned around failures before, but Apple really needed more than a hatchet man to layoff a bunch of employees and cash out afterward with a huge paycheck. Apple needed a consistent direction and a pilot interested in getting there. When Steve Jobs took over as CEO, Apple gained that sense of purposeful direction. [...]
[...] While Microsoft struggles to force its user base to pay for a half-baked upgrade, Apple is finding lots of new customers willing to pay for premium hardware. The Mac II A high Prices strategy, a low Product Innovation 1990 was the year Apple first showed their secret set top box, based upon the Mac. They were going to conquer the world, define convergence and ride the digital revolution into the sunset. At least that's what Sculley had everyone saying. Sculley would often talk about ‘participating in all stages of the food chain.' Well here we are 15 years later, their iLife, iPod, iTunes and .Mac products define a new era digital lifestyle and they've finally come out with a product that does TV. [...]
[...] That quarter Apple also shipped 746,000 Macs and reported a profit of $38 million. Skip ahead five years to the fiscal fourth-quarter of 2006. Apple reported a profit of $546 million; it shipped 8.7 million iPods and 1.6 million Macs. The iPod is certainly credited with having an affect on those numbers over the years, but as NPD's Ross Rubin points out Apple has not forgotten the Mac. The iPod continues to be the darling of consumers, but Apple does have some competition on the horizon. [...]
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