Michael Primeaux

Parallel and Distributed Systems


Apple WWDC 2011

I’ve attended the Apple WWDC for the past 4 years and it’s been nothing short of exciting each year. This year, event sold out in 10 hours and so I am fortunate to have a spot. In contrast to last year, the event sold out in approxiately 14 days. Steve Jobs delivered a very interesting keynote speech with features that in my opinion ensure Apple will continue to stay a few years ahead of all other mobile companies. It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come since my first 4 Macs, which were the Apple II, IIc, IIe, and IIGS. Ahhh…and let us not forget other microcomputers such as the Amiga, Commodore 64, and the earlier TRS-80 (also known as the “trash 80″). The TRS-80 was in fact technically my first personal computer.

Here are a few very interesting statistics at the time of this writing:

  • There are over 225 million iOS devices worldwide.
  • Apple represents a 48% share of the tablet and mobile market.
  • 25 million iPads have been sold to date.
  • There are 425,000 applications in the App Store with 90,000 of those applications specifically designed to run on the iPad.
  • The App Store has enjoyed over 14 billion downloads
  • Apple has 225 million credit card accounts.
  • Apple has shipped 54 million Macs and growing, which is a 28% growth over last year. To contrast this, PC growth is at a negative 1% growth over the same year.
  • 73% of the Macs shipped today are notebooks

These statistics are astounding. I am of course not at liberty to discuss any information not made public by Apple regarding the upcoming technologies but it is sufficed to say Mac OS X Lion + iCloud + iOS 5 represents another leap in market share for Apple and a set of very useful features for consumers.