[TheBattman]

Declining, but still profitable. In fact, even before the iPod, Apple had found profit -and a healthy one at that. The iPod has helped boost the bottom line while waiting on new processors for the PowerBooks. But overall, Apple is good at what it does - and that's keep it's installed base happy.

And what's really funny - the fact that Apple's core market for the most part, don't buy computers as often as the average PC buyer - in part because Apple's products tend to have a much longer useful life. Thus you could have approximately the same number of Apple users/customers - but it wouldn't necessarily show in sales figures.

[Bush2000]

Declining, but still profitable.

It's not that difficult to understand. At the current rate, Apple simply won't have enough market share to justify software developers investing in a platform with less than 1% market share.

[RS]

"Thus you could have approximately the same number of Apple users/customers - but it wouldn't necessarily show in sales figures."

If these figures are anywhere near correct -

http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html

if EVERY Apple/Macintosh computer ever sold were still in use today it would not get even close to the number of PC's sold last year alone.