2011 was going to emerge as the year to "Get Apple" with competitors
trying hard to get a piece of that company's profitable market for
smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more.
That may be easier said than done, however.
By mid-2009, for instance, statistics suggested that Apple held an
astounding 91% of retail sales of personal computers priced above
$1,000, the most profitable market segment - clearly an opportunity for
competition. Dell, for instance, debuted an
Adamo XPS laptop: a 13" slim and sleek ultraportable targeting
potential customers of Apple's MacBook Air. Now? No Adamos to be
found on Dell's website.
HP targeted Apple's main line MacBook Pro customers with a stylish
Envy laptop line. While 14" and 17" Envy models remain in production,
HP recently dropped its Envy 13 model, a direct competitor to Apple's most popular
MacBook Pro model.
While competitors try to match or surpass the feature set on current
Apple products, Apple is a moving target. Ultralight MacBook Air models
were updated last fall,
mainstream MacBook
Pro laptops in late February, and the
not-yet-one-year-old iPad was bumped up in early March.
PC
Magazine (not generally one of the Mac's biggest fans) described
the new 15" MacBook Pro model as "the fastest, most technologically
advanced laptop to grace our labs benches."
The new MacBook Pros don't look any different - all that
distinguishes this year's 13" model (priced from $1,249) from last year's model, for
instance, is a little lightning bolt icon beside the port for
connecting external displays.
This Thunderbolt port can still be used to connect a projector or
large-screen monitor, but it's also a high-speed connection for future
hard drives, networking devices, and more, promising 20 times the speed
of USB 2.0. It was developed by Intel, and Apple is the first to use
it.
Internally, the new 13" MacBook (there are also updated 15" and 17"
models) also includes more powerful Intel Core i5 processors and larger
hard drives. Screen resolution is unchanged while the new Intel
graphics processor is actually a bit slower than the last generation's
discrete Nvidia GPU. (The larger MacBook models include dual graphics
processors: one to maximize battery life, the other for better gaming
performance.) At seven hours, battery life remains strong.
The new iPad 2, meanwhile, is
thinner, a bit lighter, with a more powerful main processor and faster
graphics. It adds a pair of (low-resolution) cameras: front for video
calls and rear for shooting stills and video.
Some things remain the same: 10" screen size with 1024 x 768
resolution. Battery life is around 10 hours. The same range of models
with the same storage capacities - 16, 32, and 64 gigabytes - at the
same price points. (The original iPad models are available at somewhat
reduced prices.)
And while tablets announced by competitors, including HP and RIM,
are not yet available to interested customers, the iPad 2 quickly
arrived on store shelves. Apple followed up its March 2 product
announcement with US availability on March 11 and availability in
Canada and many other countries promised for March 25.
Samsung mobile division vice-president Lee Don-Joo admitted that
Apple's thin new model made him feel a need to "improve the parts that
are inadequate" and revise pricing on Samsung's competing Galaxy Tab.
Tablet competitors have found it difficult to match Apple's iPad (and
now iPad 2) pricing.
Competitors are finding it difficult to compete with Apple in the
high-end laptop and tablet markets, but Apple does have a bit of a
dilemma: the media, the stock markets, and many customers expect every
product announcement to be a revolution. The new MacBooks and iPad 2s
are instead relatively modest incremental improvements over previous
models - nice enough, but no need to rush to replace last year's
models.
(Still, if anyone wants to make me a good offer on my
first-generation iPad....) 
First published in Business in Vancouver March 22-29, 2011 issue #1117.
