With all the current hype surrounding the imminent release of both the upgrade to Apple's .Mac service, now to be forever known as MobileMe, and Friday's launch of the new, improved iPhone version 2.0, let's not forget that Apple also makes other types of hardware that seems to be selling pretty well these days. In fact, according to a recent article up over at AppleInsider, Apple is apparently poised to ship 2.5 Million Macs in the Spring -- thanks, in some measure, to the poor reception of Microsoft's Windows Vista.According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, Apple's potentially strong quarter, which ends in June, can be attributed to several factors. Among them, user dissatisfaction with Vista. "Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X," Bachman said in the article. "Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers."
In addition, the analyst added that this problem could help Apple's bottom line well into 2009 and could potentially improve the company's current world market share, raising it to 3.9% or higher. This is good news for those of us who remember the time, not so long ago, when most in the press and analysts like Bachman predicted Apple's certain demise. Still, even with this good news, we still need to hope Apple doesn't do something to hurt itself -- like bungle the .Mac to MobileMe transition or run out of shiny new iPhones at 8:30AM on Friday. That would not be a good thing.
Apple will be reporting its 
You can't rush excellence, but sometimes you can speed it up just a smidge. Apple reports that it sold iPhone #1 million on September 9th, just 74 days after the product introduction (and 4 days after the 
Well, it looks like the 
Apple made a big leap in their Fortune 500 ranking for 2006 when the list was released earlier this week. Previously, they were at number 159. Now, 
With the Macworld keynote still on the horizon, the last thing Apple needs is a few more lawsuits and federal investigations. 
BusinessWeek 
It seems that
the geeks like you and me aren't the only ones excited about Apple's release of 
We don't get to
watch the Macworld keynote live anymore, buy you can still watch the quarterly conference call. Apple will webcast this
report today at 2pm PT (5pm EST) 
