SiliconBeat

Apple’s earnings report today was incredibly impressive. But as interesting to me as the record revenues and sales was just how much the company has changed in just a few short years.

As recently as seven years ago, Apple was at heart a computer that also had a sideline of digital music players. As recently as four years ago, you could make the case that Apple was a digital music company that also happened to sell computers.

Now, Apple is clearly a mobile phone maker who also happens to sell computing devices and, oh by the way, a few digital music players.

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(updated below)

My colleague John Boudreau is feverishly writing a story about Apple’s earnings. But here’s my quick take:

1. Very good quarter for the Mac. Apple sold 2.6 million Macs in the quarter, coming within spitting distance of the most the company has ever sold in a quarter. Unit sales were up 4 percent from the same quarter last year.

That may not sound like much, but given the terrible economic environment in general and the slumping PC market in particular, the Mac results are solid. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently bought a 13-inch MacBook. And I’m giddy a like a school girl about it.

But rather than just wax poetic about the joys of Apple, I wanted to share my journey and a few of the things I learned about myself along the way.

Just to get one thing out of the way, I’m not going to indulge in a lot of PC or Microsoft bashing. I’ve used various PCs and Windows-laptops over the past decade, and I have few complaints. But what was interesting, and this was something I didn’t recognize until much later, was how little passion they inspired. I liked these machines, but I certainly never bragged about having one, and never talked them up to friends.

But let me indulge, and go back to the beginning of my journey. Read the rest of this entry »