10 years of Apple

It’s absolutely no secret that I’m a fan of Apple. And with that, this blog post is about the last decade of Apple. This being the only decade where I was involved with Apple, either professionally or personally. I’m a moderately recent convert compared to the cult of mac folk who are on the internet (and likely to trip up on this article).

So, let’s take a look at what the last decade has brought us from the mighty Apple.

In software, we saw a transition in 2001 when Apple went from the 1999-released OS 9 to OS 10, and the introduction to cat names for the operating system packages.

OS 9 developed the early concept of a Dock

OS10 had whole new concepts for browsing your computer

Then came the cat names. Cheetah, Panther… all the way up to Leopard and the current iteration, Snow Leopard.

Cheetah!

Panther!

Tiger was released and was the first real keystone to Apple’s current strategy, knocking ten rounds out of Microsoft and introduced a new range of hardware with it.

Tiger refined all of the ideas before it

After Tiger, we enter something that took huge advantage on the failures of Windows Vista, gaining new customers worldwide, growing Apples fanbase exponentially. Many will look back at Leopard as being the “perfect” mass market OS, and Snow Leopard after it, released this year, improves further on Leopard.

Leopard... perfect?

New mac users this year will be used to this screen

Even at a Windows 7 launch this year, the Microsoft representative who spoke to a crowd in Dublin admitted he was an Apple fanboy. This is the world we live in. iPods came and went, reducing in size with the nano, increasing in capacity with the Classic. New iMac revisions came and went, and a huge redesign of the Macbook range came along.

New Macbook range made from a unibody case are shockingly beautiful

Apple also entered new markets with iTunes, by far the biggest digital distributor for music and now movies. With that they introduced Apple TV, a hardware device to allow users to watch movies away from their iTunes-running computers and back to the sofa with a nice TV set. Ultimately this plan didn’t go quite as well as others, but the form factor did get replicated in the Time Capsule device – a wireless-N router and hard drive for backing up data from your Mac.

Apple TV was set to transform the home

At its launch, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer laughed at the iPhone. What an idiot. Apple now control more market share then Symbian (Nokia’s supplier) for operating systems run as well as killing RIM (BlackBerry) and Palm at the tills.

iPhone came to market being laughed at by MS and co. Look at them now...

After a hardware revision and software updates, the iPhone now sells extra functionality through its app store, which has thousands of developers worldwide dedicated to the platform. One huge reason for its success. Selling extra apps that do things Apple never thought of (like have a twitter client) and games (like id’s DOOM or Earthworm Jim!) have created a whole new cult of mac type of following. This phone is often called the jesus phone, and is held as the standard at which other smart-phones attest to, including Google’s up-coming phone.

In 2010 we’re likely to see further power being shoved into the hardware as well as a new iPhone revision (and probable redesign) alongside a huge amount of new software being released to consumers. All of which geared towards taking advantage of the huge potential under the hood in Snow Leopard.

iTablet is rumoured to be a large scale iPhone type design

The biggest idea to get released next year, if it happens, could well be the swansong of the successful fired-and-returned CEO, Steve Jobs, who has spent the better part of the year fighting cancer. Likely to retire to spend time at home with his family after battling the life threatening condition, he has to leave on a high note. That high note? Touch screen computing. Not a Macbook Pro, but a Macbook Tablet idea, dubbed online as the iTablet. Basically a giant iPhone with Macbook Pro power underneath it. Several rumoured re-designs of the product have hampered the release, most likely due to Jobs’ resilience in seeking the best quality product for his congregation.

Either way, the last ten years have been fun. I know I’ve left out a lot of stuff but really there’s too much to go into. iWork, iLife, iTunes, mice, retail stores and so on. Either way, it’s nice to look back a bit. But nicer to look forward! Here’s to 2010…