Trends 2007: The Rise of Apple

Apple has firmly established itself as "the new cool". It's obvious that the company has hit its stride, with a relentless march of new products and continued evolution of its entire product line.

There is something to be said for a company that continues to delight its customers, create new classes of products, inspire such devotion (when was the last time you heard of a Windows fanboy), and manage to garner so much press, both mainstream and blogosphere.

I personally made the transition to Apple products in early 2002, and have not looked back. My personal five-year Apple timeline is:

1. 2002/03: 15 inch Titanium PowerBook G4
2. 2002/08: Mac OS 10.2, Jaguar
3. 2003/04: First iTunes purchase ("Look to the Rainbow", Dinah Washington)
4. 2003/10: Mac OS 10.3, Panther
5. 2004/08: eMac, (college machine)
6. 2004/08: 3G iPod, 15Gb
7. 2005/03: 15 inch Aluminum PowerBook G4
8. 2005/06: Mac OS 10.4, Tiger
9. 2005/09: 4G Video iPod, 30Gb
10. 2006/12: MacBook (college machine)
11. 2007/06: iPhone
12. 2007/08: MacBook (college machine)

During that period, Apple stock has grown from about $12.00 to over $130, I have purchased three generations of iPods, three versions of computers in two families (PowerBook G4, eMac, MacBook), three major operating system revisions.