The Future Of The Apple Mac?

Apple's event today was notable not for the shiny new MacBook Air (lovely as the expensive little netbook is) but for the meteoric rise of the Mac laptop. Presumably the growth (to 1 in 5 computers sold being a Mac) comes from a shift in customer perception of Apples as "weird" - a charge led by the myriad Apple Stores popping up, but principally due to consumers getting and loving iPhones and iPads, reasoning other Apple products must also be good.

Sadly, as I've noted before the desktop Mac OSX has some quirks that make it frustrating for long-time users, let along the confusion of newbies. Apple must have been reading blogs like this, as they appear to be addressing some of these foibles with OSX Lion (due in Summer 2011). I hoping that the importance of change on the desktop is not lost on the folks in Cupertino - customers want as easy an experience with OSX as on their iOS devices. If Steve can fix it so that a) Launching applications is much more intuitive (i.e. like the iPad), b) traditional quirks (such as no full screen, fixed menu bars, weird behaving expand buttons, etc) are not treated as sacred cows c) Finder can be made to suck less - they will wipe the floor properly.

As a Mac lover, I welcome the day that we turn around and realise that MS are the underdogs. That day will come soon... so long as they don't mess up the merging of OSX and iOS.

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