By the time of my next deadline for this column, Steve Jobs will have already addressed the crowds at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, and all the rumor and speculation about what Apple Computer (AAPL) has up its sleeve will subside to its usual dull roar.
This fact -- plus the beginning of the new year -- makes for a perfect time to look back on 2005, but more importantly look ahead to what I want from Apple in 2006.
PODS OF iPODS. If ever there was a tough act to follow for Apple, 2005 was it. Consider where the company was at this time last year. The iPod shuffle hadn't happened yet. Nor had the Mac mini or the fifth-generation iPod known popularly as the iPod video.
Apple's 2005 product-release schedule was nothing short of extraordinary. Looking back through all the press releases, and not accounting for differences in storage capacity, I've counted releases of no less than six different variants of iPod alone. That's marketing.
And a year ago, murmurs about Apple's shift to Intel (INTC) chips were still only at rumor stage, with plenty of nay-sayers -- including, I'll admit, myself. Tiger, the latest iteration of Mac OS X, was only a cub a year ago. Now, it's roaring nicely.
SMART BET. Apple's 2005 numbers say it all. Nearly 23 million iPods were sold in fiscal 2005, which included the final three months of calendar 2004. Estimates for calendar 2005 suggest iPod sales could break the 30-million mark when all is said and done.
Apple's sales hit $13.9 billion. Its stock price set a record, breaking into the mid $70s by mid-December, after starting the year just south of $40 a share on a split-adjusted basis. Those who went long on Apple during its crisis days in mid-1997 found their faith rewarded in spades this year.
As I noted last month in our companion blog, one of the Mac faithful was the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, whose 5% stake in Apple, which he bought for $115 million, had shrunk in size but ballooned in value. It's now a 3% stake worth $1.5 billion. Not even Dell (DELL), the king of the personal computer industry, could match such a performance.
INTEL DESIGN. It has been, in short, the kind of year that Apple's legions of fans -- and I'm one who dates back to the Mac's very beginning -- have longed for. And that's going to raise the bar for success in 2006 rather high.
It will be tough to keep up such a torrid pace. Already, the early indications are that the general PC business is slowing. The latest figures from market researcher IDC suggest that 2006 will be even more sluggish in terms of sales growth than 2005, which was the weakest since 2001.
The big news for 2006 will be the shift to Intel-based machines. It could be challenging -- or the start of a major upgrade cycle. I have been spending most of my Mac-based computing time on the PowerBook G4 I purchased in March, 2005, and have almost forsaken the PowerMac G4 I bought in late 2001. Here's hoping I will get to buy an Intel-based tower that supplants the PowerMac G5 sometime in 2006. All the notebooks, iMacs, and other products should have their transition to Intel chips first, leaving the PowerMac line for last. And I suspect that's going to be a good thing.
CUTTING THE CORDS. I hope the new PowerMac is a super-box. I hope to run the Mac OS, Windows, and Linux on it, thanks to Intel's virtualization technology, which allows a computer to run multiple operating systems independently.
I want wireless USB and Fireware interfaces (see BW Online, 12/1/05, "Designs on an Apple-Branded DVR"). Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless data technology could very soon be harnessed in such a way as to eliminate the interminable tangle of cables and cords connecting a computer to printers and other devices.
My wish is that the switch to Intel will also allow new connections that haven't been as obvious. UWB could make it very easy to push digital video and music from a computer to any TV or set of speakers in the house. I think UWB should start showing up in products by the second half of the year. I'm eager to see how Apple might implement it.
GAME FOR MORE. And give me storage -- lots and lots of data storage, and room to add more. The top of the line PowerMac can now be custom-built with a terabyte of storage. Why not go for two or more as the outer limit?
And I want lots of games. This is an old complaint of game-hungry Mac users. Demand has produced more supply in recent years, but there's more progress to be made. Game software on the Mac has always trailed that of the PC in volume, and often on release schedules. The best games on the Mac are often the previous year's favorites for the PC.
Perhaps the switch to Intel could make it easier for game developers to consider showcasing their wares on the Mac, rather than treating the Mac gaming market like an afterthought. I've been playing lots of Electronic Arts' (ERTS) Command and Conquer: Generals and its expansion pack, Zero Hour, on the Mac these days. But there's also Firaxis's Civilization III. I've been following the release of Civilization IV on the Windows platform with envy. Why must Apple lovers wait?
MAC ENVY. In short, I want the very firmament of the personal computing world to rattle and shake when the next PowerMac enters the scene. After years of unceasing debate about the perceived performance gap between x86 chips like Intel's and PowerPC chips like those from IBM (IBM) and Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) -- an apple/orange comparison if ever there was one -- I want those geeks who favor Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows platform to look upon the Mac and feel a combination of envy and remorse. I want them all to take note of the Mac OS and the computers that run it, and in large numbers say at once: Now that's the way personal computing should be.
This would indeed, in the annals of Apple history, make 2006 a suitable follow-up to what has been the greatest year in its history.
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Hesseldahl is a writer for BusinessWeek Online in New York
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