Apple, the fruit is related to the rose family and living up to the reputation of the flower, Apple Inc. scents the hand that crushes it. We all at one point or the other have encountered its products. Some we have simply loved and others; the less said about, the better (refer flopped list here). Apple bashing is pretty evident in the various forums that we come across on the net, but this we have to agree upon, that their products have left an indelible mark on our lifestyles and the way we perceive electronics goods. When you delve into their past, present and future you will realize that this is one company that has used innovation to its best. And the creative outflow has not been restricted to one or two products or services. Their foresight has enabled to give consumers what they want even before realizing that they would require it. Come "Byte into an Apple" and countdown top 10 with us. No 10 - iTunes and iTunes Store iTunes is synonymous with iPod and made its debut at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, on 10 th January 2001, iTunes has come a long way since its humble beginnings. An interface used to manage your digital music and video files, it also hooks onto the iTunes Store to allow you to purchase and download digital music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks, various podcasts, feature length films, and ringtones. When you talk about iTunes, it's hard to ignore podcasts and the iTunes Store. The term "podcast" is a blend of the words "iPod" and "broadcast". Podcasts were specially developed for the iPod, thus starting a whole new industry. The podcasting scripts were developed to allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to the iPod after they are downloaded. Making complete business sense was the launch of the iTunes Music Store (re-christened iTunes Store) in April 2003. The Store sells millions of songs, podcasts, movies, music videos, audiobooks, iPod games, TV shows. Frankly speaking, I'm feeling a bit stupid elaborating on the store because I'm sure all of you know what the store means to all iPod and iPhone users. But if you talk about business-wise, the Store is the perfect way to compensate goof-ups that Apple does. Like when Apple slashed the iPhone rates within months of its release, as a compensation iTunes Stores vouchers were offered to the affected customers; their money came back to them! No 9 - AirPort AirPort, the local area wireless networking brand from Apple has an interesting anecdote that goes like this: It made its debut on July 21, 1999 at the Macworld Expo in New York City. Apparently at the conference Steve Jobs picked up his iBook and faced it to the cameraman to give a better shot. As he was surfing the Internet at that time, it took a while for it to sink in that he was surfing the net without using any wires hooked onto the book. Once the audience realized what was going on, they broke into applause. Like they say seeing is believing; the impact of the sight of a comp hooked onto the net sans wires was worth thousands of reams of publicity and ad releases. When it released in Japan, Apple had to forego the name AirPort for its product because another company was already using the name, they had to opt for AirMac. The original AirPort system allowed transfer rates up to 11 Mbit/s and was commonly used to share Internet access and files between multiple computers. In 2007, AirPort Extreme debuted and allows theoretical peak data transfer rates of up to 54 Mbit/s, and is fully backward-compatible with existing 802.11b wireless network cards and base stations. The original family of AirPort base stations used 40-bit or 128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). AirPort and AirPort Extreme have various security options to prevent eavesdropping and unauthorized network access, including several forms of cryptography. However, AirPort Extreme and Express base stations hang on to this option, but also allow and encourage the use of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2. The original AirPort was discontinued in 2004. No 8 - The MacBook Almost as soon as it made its debut in May 2006, the MacBook, successor to the iBook was bogged down with problems. Amongst the many noises heard, random shutdowns, mooing and clicking noise of the fan and discoloration of the palm-rest were more predominant. But the most bizarre complain on the MacBook has to be about the sharp edges; this resulted in cut on your wrists while typing. Several users had returned their MacBooks because of the sharp edges, and 'fixes' on the Apple Discussion Boards focused on physically altering the MacBook by filing down the lexan edges with a file or knife or affixing tape. Despite these initial hiccups, the MacBook rose from the ashes like a phoenix. It came out in three configurations and shades, however specs-wise there was little difference between them. The base model started out at $1,099, but it was not the price or the specs that ruled the market of this lappie, its sleek ebony color that drove the market. Another winning feature was that compared to the iBook installing RAM on the MacBook was easier. What's more you no longer needed an army of techies & tools to help you remove and replace your hard drive. By simply removing a metal cover you gain access to the RAM and simply slide out the hard drive and slip in a new one. Also new to the portable line is the use of Intel integrated graphics subsystem. The GMA950 chipset, first used by Apple in the Intel Mac mini, doesn't have any dedicated memory, instead siphoning off a fixed amount of the main memory before it's available to the operating system. With the Intel Processors in, you could even operate Windows on a Mac. The latest versions of MacBook use Intel Core 2 Duo processors. No 7 - Apple II Resembling a home appliance, this computer went on to become the very first and most successful personal computers. It earned the status of the de facto standard computer in American education. Some of them are still used in classrooms today. The Apple II was popular with business users as well as with families and schools, particularly after the release of the first-ever personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, which initially ran only on the Apple II. Its success established the company as a major player in the early days of the personal computer revolution. It even helped the company to maintain their status when they floundered with their attempts to create new computer platforms like the Apple III, the Lisa, and the early days of the Macintosh. In short, the Apple II saved Apple Computer itself! It was introduced in on June 5, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audiocassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. Sounds alien in this day and age! When Apple introduced the Macintosh there were angry protest amongst the loyalists, they were upset that a new line was introduced instead of upgrading the Apple II. One of the Apple II's greatest strength is the attention paid over the years to ensure backward compatibility as enhancements were introduced. That compatibility meant that a IIGS "power system" manufactured in its latter days, with a full 8 megabytes of memory, a hand-held optical scanner, CD-ROM drive, and 150 meg of hard disk storage, could still run an Integer BASIC program written in 1977, probably without any modification! However this strength was also considered a weakness by many, it presented a major difficulty in making design improvements that kept up with the advances in computer technology between 1976 and 1993, but yet maintaining the compatibility with the past. By the end of its tenure (in 1993) nearly 5 to 6 million Apple II series computers (including approximately 1.25 million Apple IIGS models) had been produced. No 6 - The Apple LaserWriter Desktop Publishing took on a whole new meaning with the Apple LaserWriter. It was introduced in 1985 and became one of the first laser printer to be available for the masses. The combo of the LaserWriter printer, publishing software Aldus PageMaker, and the GUI-based Macintosh, is considered by some to have sparked the desktop publishing (DTP) revolution. It boasted a printer resolution of 300 dpi and printing speed of 8ppm. But what really made the difference was the inclusion of Adobe PostScript interpreter to the system. The original LaserWriter printer used a Canon LBP-CX print engine. However revolutionary technology never comes cheap, compared to the cheap dot-matrix alternative, the LaserWriter cost a bomb…$6,995 to be precise. After a three-year stint, the LaserWriter was discontinued in early1988. Legend has it that when John Warnock and Charles Geschke, the creators of PostScript, started Adobe Systems, they still saw themselves producing a complete package, with the system integrated with laser printing machinery. But three months after they started, according to John Warnock they realized that the days of the big machines could be ending. They realized that "all the major computer companies were interested in laser printing." The real breakthrough came when Mergenthaler and Adobe agreed that the Linotronic film typeset-ting machines would be compatible with the "ultra cheap" 300 dpi Apple Laser-Writer. One of the new "cheap" laser printers was advertised with the headline " Say goodbye to Dot and Daisy..." No 5 - iPhone Imitation is the best form of flattery, and you know you have arrived when there are spitting images and aspirants all around you. Be it cheap Chinese imitations or genuine rip-off from the known makers, all are hankering to incorporate the touch interface that iPhone popularized. I wont forget June 29th for two reasons; my dad's birthday but more importantly the iPhone launched. You won't believe this, but 270,000 iPhones were snapped up in the first 30 hours on launch weekend and AT&T reported that 146,000 iPhones activated in the same time period. iPhone enjoys phenomenal success largely due to the strategy that not everyone can buy it as AT&T holds it close to its chest. Wordwide too, we are seeing people protesting the monopoly that Apple has been clouting. In India and China the unlocked iPhone is available on the streets at a premium. It's almost like a status symbol out there to own one. The locked iPhone has inducted a whole new industry that thrives on unlocking the phone. The iPhone is truly a product of great foresight. Top five USP of the iPhone: super-cool multi-touch interface, modified Mac OSX, Visual Voicemail, Safari Web Browser and various multimedia applications. No 4 - The iMac When iMac came into this world in 1998, little did it know that it would command such respect in the market, that it would be solely responsible for Intel's USB port's success. Although Apple had access to Apple Desktop Bus and SCSI, but it dropped those in favor of USB. Thus iMac's popularity and sole dependence on USB helped popularize the interface among third party peripheral makers. As a result, many early USB peripherals were made of translucent colored plastic to match the color schemes of the original iMac. To get to it's present status the iMac evolved thrice, the first version (G3) saw an egg-shaped with a CRT monitor that was mainly housed in a colored, translucent plastic body. The next upgrade (G4) saw some major changes in design. It became a hemispherical base containing all the main components and an LCD monitor on a freely moving arm attached to the top of the base. With the third upgrade (G5) iMac transformed to a monitor where all the components were placed immediately behind the monitor, creating a slim design which tilts only up and down on a simple metal base. Besides offering a sleek new monitor, iMac enjoys prestige in popular culture due to its distinctive aesthetics and Apple's successful marketing. Needless to say at that point in time Apple was not able to cope up with the supply orders for this monitor. Not only did it top the "Must Haves List", it also was the best selling piece. Amazing Tech-specs aside, the iMac depended heavily on advertising to push the product, with catch phrases like, "the back of our computer looks better than the front of anyone else's", it was easy to drive home the message. Even industry critics like Walt Mossberg were lavishing praises. Moving on, the 'i' in the iMac stood for the Internet, thus it provided an out-of-box experience. There were only two steps required to hook you to the net, and like actor Jeff Goldblum said: "There's no step 3!" The translucent colored plastic design inspired many other products to adopt that style, including things as mundane as pencil sharpeners and Nintendo 64. No 3 - The Macintosh 128K The Macintosh 128K distinguishes itself from its predecessor by simply adding the128K. it was the first real home computer that featured a keyboard and a mouse. The initial design excluded the numeric keys but a separate numeric keypad was available for a price. It was interesting to delve into the history of Macintosh 128K, because quite a few skeletons resurfaced. Like the time when Steve Jobs was adamant about not fitting a fan into the comp. It even won the comp the nickname "The beige toaster" due to the persistent overheating. Even after seventy-four days since it hit the shelves, the "Macintosh" had not even managed to sell 50,000 units. Apple refused to license the OS or the hardware, the 128k memory was not enough and a single floppy was difficult to use. The Macintosh had Lisa's user friendly GUI, but initially missed some of the more powerful features of the Lisa like multitasking and the 1 MB of memory. Jobs compensated by making sure developers created software for the new Macintosh, Jobs figured that software was the way to win the consumer over. Then in 1985, Macintosh received a big sales boost with the introduction of the LaserWriter printer and Aldus PageMaker. Home desktop publishing was now possible. But 1985 was also the year when the original founders of Apple left the company. Apparently the signatures of the original Mac designers are molded into the inside back of the case. One entertaining aspect of this is the placement of the names of Jobs and Woz. Jobs signed his name nice and big smack dab in the center of the case. Off in the lower right hand corner is a little scribbled "Woz." However, in the actual stamped case, there is a thickened strip running down the center, presumably to provide stiffness. This strip partially obscures Steve's name, while the little Woz in the corner remains unscathed. But despite all the gory history, the Macintosh 128K is something that we have grown to love. The games that we played on it, like Pong, Missle Command and Megaroids are hard to forget. Old is Gold. No 2 - iPod: Shuffle, Nano, Classic and Touch When the iPod made its debut in 2001 it revolutionized the music world. iPod mania gripped each music loving soul. Many spin-offs have been introduced but eventually never match up to the bar set by Apple. Without trashing the honorable competition, lets focus on the pluses of this digital player. When Steve Jobs realized that the bulky, redundant digital options were not fit for the consumers, he ordered his team of engineers to assemble a player that could at least put a "1000 songs in your pocket." The click wheel is the easiest of interfaces that one can use. Innovation is the name of the game; besides supporting an array of file formats for audio, its image and video support is impressive. Every holiday season sees a boost in the demand for the product and with special offers like the (Product) Red, Apple knows how to string the right cords. At this point I must admit, that when I first bought my player (Nano 2GB), I was a bit intimidated with iTunes. I still have trouble uploading and saving songs from my CD collection to iTunes, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to upgrade to the iPod Touch. No 1 - Mac OS X There is too much history behind the evolution of the Mac OS X and if I sit to trace it would take ages. But to understand why we love the OS X I need to give you a very brief recap. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start his own setup called NeXT. At that time Apple was in the process of developing an OS through the Taligent and Copland projects, with little success. In the end NeXT's OS (called OPENSTEP) formed the basis for Apple's next OS, and Apple (almost sued Jobs, but later dropped the suit) purchased NeXT outright. The very shrewd Jobs made some more bucks and was into the Apple fold again. As interim CEO (later full-time CEO) Steve's new project was known as Rhapsody and later christened OS X. Jobs said that OS X would ship in the fall of 1999, and would inherit from both Mac OS and Rhapsody. Moreover, backward compatibility would be maintained to ease customers into the transition. The OS transformed to newer version; Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and now Leopard. With each new version Apple shifted focus from backward compatibility and laid emphasis on "digital lifestyle" applications such as the iLife suite, enhanced business applications (iWork), and integrated home entertainment (the Front Row media center). The most noticeable change was the Aqua theme. It featured soft edges, translucent colors, and pinstripes resembling the hardware design of the first iMacs and brought more texture and color to the user interface than OS 9's "Platinum" appearance had offered. Via - Wikipedia, Apple and Macworld