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Video: A Decade of Apple Design
Who would have thought, in early 2000, that Apple would end the decade as the most valuable technology company on the planet? The last ten years have been a roller coaster ride of product releases, technology milestones and carefully choreographed media events that first saved the company from ruin, and later helped propel it to dizzying heights of market and mind share dominance … with a fair bit of infamy thrown in along the way.

Take a trip with me through the last decade of milestone product releases from our favourite consumer electronics — sorry, our favourite “mobile computing” — company. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come in such a short time.

A few things to note: I haven’t included every product release on the timeline, just those I felt stood out. I’ve included a little trivia here and there, but this is by no means supposed to be the most fact-filled timeline of Apple events.

Did I miss something obvious that really, definitely, absolutely should be included? Share your suggestions in the comments below and who knows — maybe I’ll add them in later.

Happy New Year everyone, and Happy New Decade — I can’t wait to see what Apple has in store for us next!

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The Apple Lover's Guide to CES
Thursday, Jan. 6 marks the beginning of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Unlike many of its biggest rivals, Apple doesn’t play the CES game. So what does the show have to offer the average Apple user? At least two things: accessories and a sense of superiority.

My inbox is usually flooded with a steady stream of emails from PR and marketing agencies touting the amazing new products their clients have to offer. That steady stream becomes a raging torrent during CES season. If an accessory or device maker can release or announce a new product at CES, it will. So if you’re looking for a new iPad or iPhone case, battery, charger, backup solution, or anything else that you can plug into an Apple product to (arguably) make it better, this could be the time to find it.

Some good things will come from the accessory rush. For example, MiLi Power is introducing a $99 iPad HDMI dock/speaker combo that should make it incredibly easy for you to hook your iPad up to HDTVs anywhere you go, and playback content (like Netflix) in 1080i, which adds considerably to the iPad’s cord cutting potential. And there’s an iPad-compatible version of Breffo’s versatile Spiderpodium flexible dock that I can see being a great boon to gym-goers. Watching the gadget parade is fun, but overall, consumers will want to stay back from the accessory madness and instead see what emerges as most promising when the dust settles a few weeks down the road.

The other thing CES provides Apple fans is a solid reminder of why we remain devotees of the products coming out of Cupertino. We can thank Apple’s longtime rival Microsoft for a lot of that sense of satisfaction. It seems like every year at CES we see Microsoft trying to launch new platforms to compete with Apple. Last year, it introduced the HP Slate, which didn’t launch until Oct. 22, 2010, by which time the iPad had already dominated the tablet market and shown what a folly it is to try to shoehorn an OS not designed for touch computing onto a touch computing device.

This year, Microsoft is set to unveil yet more tablet efforts, from Samsung, Dell and others. But unless we see a tablet-optimized Windows 8 (or a special version of Windows Phone 7), don’t expect these new devices to make good on any claims of being “iPad killers.” Apple followers should take competing tablet product announcements (including those powered by Android) as a rough preview of what’s to come with the iPad 2. Specs and features should indicate roughly where the iPad needs to be to stay on top, but expect Apple to have something extra to show off when it unveils its next generation tablet.

Microsoft is also expected to introduce an Apple TV competitor, which basically consists of a stripped down PC with a special Media Center-only version of Windows 7 running on it. The device should have onboard storage, but reportedly also be twice the price of Apple’s offering. Not sure what Microsoft hopes to gain by challenging Apple and Google with what sounds like repackaged existing software, but it could provide additional incentive for Apple to expand Apple TV’s capabilities, at least.

With Macworld coming up Jan. 26 – 29, and likely an Apple event toward the end of the month if history repeats itself, CES is a nice enough appetizer, but it certainly isn’t the main course. I’ll probably be spending my Jan. 6 playing with (and likely spending too much money on) the Mac App Store.

What are you most looking forward to from the show?

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Handbrake 0.9.5 Update Supports Apple TV 2, iPad, iPhone 4
Fair Use rights fans rejoice! Last updated in 2009, Handbrake, the open-source, cross-platform video transcoding app with the ugly icon, kicks off 2011 with updated presets for the new Apple TV, the iPad and the iPhone 4, but drops PPC support.

Handbrake 0.9.5 adds presets for the iPhone 4 and the iPad, as well as the Apple TV 2. For the latter, the changes include setting the frame rate to NTSC Video standard. These features should make it easier to get content onto a variety of devices, with the best quality possible.

Other improvements include AC3 encoding support, universal audio downmix support, updated libraries for x264 and ffmpeg, SSA subtitle support, better detection of a DVD’s main feature, and more. In terms of usability, editing queue jobs is now thankfully possible.

For Mac users, Handbrake now checks for VLC in /Applications and ~/Applications. That’s important because DVD decryption libraries were decoupled from Handbrake in version 0.9.3, so you need VLC to convert DVDs. Note that if you’re using the 64-bit version of Handbrake also requires that you use the 64-bit version of VLC to handle DVD conversion. Likewise, if you’re using the 32-bit version, you’ll have to have the 32-bit version of VLC installed for the programs to work together.

While Handbrake 0.9.5 now also supports the Blu-ray format, it does not decrypt discs. You’ll need separate ripping software, VLC, and Handbrake for that. Sadly, the state of Blu-ray support on Mac remains weak due to Apple’s indifference towards the format.

HandBrake 0.9.5 is available 32-bit and 64-bit versions for both OS X 10.5 and 10.6, but not PowerPC Macs, though running Handbrake on anything less than a G5 would be pretty painful anyway. Handbrake 0.9.5 is available for download, and don’t forget to get the latest version of VLC for DVD decryption, too.

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Strong Holiday Quarter Sales Estimates for Apple
Apple is expected to report very strong results at its quarterly conference call Jan. 18. Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore raised his initial estimates (via AppleInsider) for Apple’s product sales during the company’s first quarter of its financial year, which includes December, based on retail channel checks.

Whitmore’s checks covered more than 50 Apple retail stores, and stores belonging to retail partners like Best Buy. His inquiries found that demand was very high, but Apple was well-prepared for said demand, and few stores experienced complete sell-outs of any product.

The iPad was a strong seller, so much so that Whitmore increased his estimate for quarterly sales for the device from 6.0 to 6.5 million. The best-selling model of iPad according to the channel checks was the 32 GB 3G + Wi-Fi iPad: the most expensive one available.

Whitmore also increased his iPhone and Mac sales estimates. iPhone sales are projected to be around 16 million (in keeping with earlier estimates, since Whitmore isn’t counting on a Verizon iPhone), while Macs (the lowest selling category) should see around 14.2 million, according to the analyst’s calculations. iPods were the only device category whose sales estimates Whitmore did not increase.

Holiday sales estimates for Apple products, and the iPad especially, have been all over the place, but a recent roundup of various analyst predictions by Fortune found the average of iPad sales estimates to be around 6.53 million sold during the quarter including December, which is very much in line with Whitmore’s figures.

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