Is Apple going back to its Roots?

It seems a long time since Apple truly focused its efforts on desktop computing. The vast majority of headlines about the company seem to focus on its range of smartphones and other mobile devices, rather than its desktop computers which often play second fiddle to the latest iPads and iPhones.

Apple recently announced the release of the fourth generation 128GB iPad, to be on sale in later this month. Reviewers were quick to discuss what this could mean for future devices and the storage capacity for the next iPhone.

“With more than 120 million iPads sold, it’s clear that customers around the world love their iPads, and every day they are finding more great reasons to work, learn and play on their iPads rather than their old PCs,” announced Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Philip Schiller.
“With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs.”

Apple has its fingers in a wide variety of technological pies and can rightly point to marked success in every sector it has entered. Its products have been groundbreaking for the consumer marketplace for music, use of mobile phones and hand held computer tablets. It is a company that constantly innovates and seeks to create the next market-leading product. Even now, rumours abound of ‘Smartwatches’ and inflatable headphones, not to mention several secret projects deep within Apple headquarters.

While it may seem that Apple has an answer for every technological need, computing is still at the heart of the company’s interests. A simple advert for network engineer jobs has caused outbreaks of interest in Apple’s advancements in wireless computing. Despite predictions of a weak computer buying trend across the market, Apple is “one vendor that will buck this trend,” Forrester Research reported. 2013 expectations are for Apple to sell approximately $11 billion of iPads and $7 billion of Macs to business consumers. Then for 2014 the figures rise to $13 billion of iPads and $8 billion of Macs. With many headlines suggesting sales may be slowing, these sales figures are still on a significantly larger scale to most competitors.

The evolution of Apple into every corner of the technology world has caused many to forget where it all started; with the original Mackintosh computer. This is clearly not the case for the leaders of Apple. Possibly a clever marketing strategy or simply a nod to its beginnings; Apple computers are to be made in Freemont, USA, once again. For anyone who knows their Apple history, Freemont was the manufacturing base in the 80s and 90s. Today Quanta Computer USA is a final assembler of Macs, with one of the locations being in Freemont. The latest iMac models launched in November included an “Assembled in the USA” marker on both the packaging and the computers themselves.

With competitors fast catching up in a number of areas, the world is keeping an eye on the future developments from Apple.