Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says that the revised MacBook line has done much to get sales going again. It also seems cheaper Mac prices may be also doing a world of good for the manufacturer as well. She now expects 2.5 million Macs to be sold in the April-June quarter.

Year-over-year this would mean only a 1 percent decrease in sales, which in this tough economic climate is fairly respectable. She also goes on to say in May shipments were up 25 percent versus only 1 percent for the PC industry at large.

This shows that the company should be able to regain some market share it had lost as a result of weaker Mac sales. Huberty seems pretty confident that this would also result in solid performance over the next two quarters, typically Apple’s busiest. It will be interesting to watch.

(Hat tip: AppleInsider)

I am writing this for those of you who may be daring enough to attempt an install of Windows 7 on your Macs. Yes, it may be blasphemy, but even us Macheads are a little curious sometimes, right?

Anyway (to me) the install was quite painless. What you want to do is open up your Applications, then select Utilities. Open up Boot Camp Assistant and Follow the instructions. Even though it asks for a XP or Vista disk, the Windows 7 disc will work.

Just make sure you select the partition labeled BOOTCAMP! Any other one could wipe your Mac OS clean.

The install went without a hitch, but I ran into serious problems in getting any drivers installed. All the instructions I’ve seen (here and here) seem to suggest the Boot Camp installer on the Leopard disk works fine.

Not for me, I got this:

That doesn’t seem to be happening with other folks, however. The instructions don’t provide for this. I’m wondering whether or not the version of my disk (10.5.1) may have something to do with it: the Boot Camp Installer is different as its an earlier version.

There is a way to fix this however if Boot Camp is failing. It involves taking the following steps:

1) Create a folder on the hard drive. For the sake of convenience, I placed it on my desktop for easy access. Name it “BootCamp” or whatever you’d like.
2) Open up the CD’s contents. For you Mac folks, this process in Windows 7 is Computer > right click on DVD drive > Open.
3) Copy the entire contents to that folder you have just created.
4) Download this file: Bootcamp.msi.
5) Place that downloaded file in the Apple directory of the copied version of the DVD, it should overwrite the previous one.
6) Run the setup.exe file. Boot Camp should install properly.

In some cases, there has been reports that this has not worked. Let us know if it doesn’t for you. But it should for most.

So far all features appear to work normally, including sound. I have also noticed the residual benefit of a much quicker load time coming into Windows.

The rivalry between Parallels and Fusion remains one of the coolest ones in computing: Both of these nifty products keep getting better. And today, Parallels is back with Desktop for Mac 4.0.

Parallels says that the new version includes more than fifty enhancements, but as a Parallels user from the start, I’m less interested in sheer number of new features and more interested in two areas which are a challenge for all virtualization products, and ones in which Fusion has seemed to have the edge: performance and laptop battery life. I haven’t tested them yet, but Parallels says that performance has improved by up to fifty percent and battery life is better by up to twenty percent compared to previous editions of Parallels.

I’m using both Parallels and Fusion and will do a formal comparison at some point; Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng has a good look at Parallels 4.0 up right now. The new version is $80 for new buyers, $40 for upgraders, and free for folks who bought Parallels since September 1st.

Here are a couple of images from Parallels’ online demo.

That doesn’t mean I’m not curious, though, or that there aren’t things I’d like to see announced. So in lieu of a list of predictions, here’s a wish list, in rough order of its chances of actually being announced tomorrow (that doesn’t count as a prediction, does it?).

Large-capacity iPods with the touch interface. When Apple released an model called the iPod Classic last year, it was clearly signalling that the days of the iPod in something close to its original form were numbered. (Yes, the company once made a computer called the Mac Classic II, but I tend to doubt there will be an iPod Classic II.) Two assumptions seem safe: Someday all iPods except the smallest and cheapest ones will have iPhone-like touch interfaces, and someday all iPods will use solid-state memory, not hard drives. It’s too early for Apple to offer an affordable 64GB or 128GB solid-state iPod Touch, so there’s room in the lineup for a hard-drive based model with a touch interface, plus Wi-Fi and support for apps.

A tethering plan for iPhones. I guess this is more of an AT&T thing than an Apple thing, but rumor has it that you’ll be able to use your iPhone as a wireless modem for a laptop. I hope rumor proves true.

Some sort of subscription plan for iTunes music. There are rumors of flat-rate all-you-can eat music for the iPod, but they don’t ring that true to me, and some of them sound like they’re associated with the purchase of a new iPod, which might mean you couldn’t apply ‘em to the iPod you already own.

An announcement about more iTunes Plus DRM-free music. At the moment, Amazon.com and other purveyors of MP3s have a significantly better selection of DRM-free tunes than iTunes does, apparently because of the unwillingness of some major labels to do deals with Apple. I’d love to see Apple get the deals it needs to catch up.

A MacBook Air with a 160GB hard drive. I have no plans to buy a MacBook Air anytime soon, but I might someday…and not until the drives get roomier.

Macs with Blu-Ray. Actually, I have no plans to buy any Mac immediately, but I’d like the next one I get to have Blu-Ray. I’m just thinking ahead…

Some Macs that are cheaper and/or beefier in terms of CPU, hard drive, and RAM for the same price. Simply because it’s time, and so that every Mac looks competitive compared to comparable PCs.

An iPhone/MobileMe update that provides a to-do list on the iPhone with synching with iCal’s to-do’s. I think this’ll happen eventually, but I can’t say I’m optimistic that it’s that high on Apple’s own to-do list.

An iPhone update that lets you rotate the phone into landscape mode for e-mail. One of the more glaring issues with the iPhone as it stands, and you’d think a relatively easy one to fix.

A new version of the nifty Remote software for iPhones that doesn’t just let you control iTunes, but stream music from it to the iPhone. Letting you listen to anything in your music library on your iPhone, thus breaking the 16GB limit. I’m guessing that local streaming via Wi-Fi will happen at some point, though it would be fabulous if you could do it across the Internet.

An iPhone/MobileMe update that provides a to-do list on the iPhone with synching with iCal’s to-do’s. I think this’ll happen eventually, but I can’t say I’m optimistic that it’s that high on Apple’s own to-do list.

An Apple TV that records TV. I don’t see this happening now or probably ever, since Apple would have to wade into the murky waters of CableCard support to do it right. But if there were an Apple TV that was also a TiVo-style DVR, I’d snap it up.

Here’s one thing I hope Apple doesn’t release tomorrow:

A major, game-changing upgrade to the MacBook Pro line. I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro just a few months ago, and I’ll be bummed if if’s rendered obsolete tomorrow. Hey, I said this was an intensely selfish list….

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.

But the Mini lives–and even though $599 is no longer anywhere near a dirt-cheap price for a computer, it remains the cheapest Mac. It also comes in a super-small package that’s still fun and distinctive. So it’s the subject of my fourth excessively in-depth Mac-vs.-PC price comparison. My goal, as always, is to gauge whether you pay a “Mac Tax” when you buy a Mini instead of a roughly comparable Windows PC.

Before we get started, here are links to earlier comparisons in this series, just in case you missed ‘em:

Round one: A mid-range MacBook vs. custom-configured Windows laptops.
Round two: The cheapest MacBook vs. cheap Windows laptops.
Round three: The iMac vs. Windows all-in-ones

As usual, I’ve got some questions and answers about this comparison…

Q. How did you decide what Windows computers to include?

A. There are relatively few Windows PCs that are anything like a Mac Mini. But Dell’s new Studio Hybrid clearly means to compete against the Mini in size and stylish design. Shuttle is famous for its small PCs, and it explicitly compares its XPC to the Mini on its Web site. And while HP doesn’t have anything quite as comparable, its Pavilion Slimline is close enough.

Q. The Mini is the cheapest Mac you can buy, but you can buy a Windows PC for half the price.
Surely that fact alone proves the Mini is expensive?

A. For some folks, a dirt-cheap Windows box might be all the computer they need, However, they’re really not that comparable to the Mini in terms of overall specs, case style, or industrial design. Which doesn’t mean I might not decide to do a comparison in a future article.

Q. How do you factor in the obvious superiority of the Mac platform? (Or, if you prefer, its obvious inferiority.)

A. I don’t! For this series, I tried to make my research err on the side of things that are easy to measure, like hard-drive size and the availability or unavailability of a particular feature. I’m not factoring in the quality of the operating systems, the presence or lack of junkware, or the amount of time that users have to spend wrestling with security software. Folks who are commenting on my comparisons are doing a great job of going beyond that to discuss the platforms in general, and I plan to do so myself eventually.

Q. Will you tell me which of the systems is best?

A. Nope–I’m just trying to determine whether the Mini looks pricey or reasonable when compared to compact Windows PCs that are at least sort of similar.

Q. Is there any way I can convince you to reveal your conclusions this very minute?

A. You need only ask. The Mini I configured looks pricey in comparison to the Dell and HP, not so much because the sticker price is high as because it scrimps on specs. The Shuttle, however, is pricier still. You can configure a well-equipped Mini, but that takes you over $1000, a price range in which the iMac looks more attractive.

Q. Stop calling it the “Mini.” It’s mini, capiche?

A. Sorry, my years of PC World copy editing are showing. We didn’t let companies give their products names that began with lower-case letters. We called the iPod the IPod until the e-mail from angry Apple fans became angry and disturbing! If I get any similar hate mail about “Mini,” I’ll probably fold quickly.

Q. You done asking yourself questions?

A. Why, yes. Yes, I am. Click on to the next page, and I’ll introduce the computers in this comparison.

Apple, of course, makes no typical desktop PCs for consumers; we’re now in the second decade of the all-in-one iMac. The unified-monitor-and-CPU form factor never conquered the Windows world, but several major manufacturers offer units that combine that design’s space-saving virtues with a splash of Apple-like flair. What say we compare the current 20-inch iMac to some Windows-based iMacalikes?

Once again, I’ll begin with a mini-FAQ, cribbing from my earlier stories:

Q. How did you decide what Windows all-in-ones to include in this comparison?

A. Well, there aren’t all that many out there to choose from, so it wasn’t that hard. I found ones from three companies I’ve included in earlier installments in this series–Dell, Gateway, and Sony. The Gateway comes in only one configuration, as far as I can tell. The Dell is extremely configurable, and the Sony comes in several versions; in both cases, I chose a standard configuration that was at least in the same ballpark as Apple’s midrange 20-inch iMac in terms of features and price.

Q. Are the Windows machines just embarrassing, shameless iMac ripoffs, like eMachines’ old eOne?

A. I think it’s safe to say that they all draw some inspiration from the iMac line, and hope to steal some of its business. But they’ve got their own personalities, and even have clever features the iMac likes. (I like the way the Gateway puts some of the ports on the power brick.) Two of them aim to be combo PC-TVs, a concept that doesn’t exist in the Apple world.

Q. The very cheapest iMacs are twelve hundred bucks–you can buy Windows desktops for way, way less than that–even once you’ve factored in the price of the monitor–and some of them have better specs. You pay a lot for that all-in-one design, my friend.

A. Very true, and I may compare an iMac to garden-variety Windows desktops at some point. In this story, though, I’m sticking to all-in-ones, none of which are dirt-cheap, and none of which have radically better overall specs than the iMac.

Q. How do you factor in the obvious superiority of the Mac platform? (Or, if you prefer, its obvious inferiority.)

A. I don’t! For this series, I tried to make my research err on the side of things that are easy to measure, like hard-drive size and the availability or unavailability of a particular feature. Folks who are commenting on my comparisons are doing a great job of going beyond that to discuss the platforms in general, and I plan to do so myself eventually.

Q. Will you tell me which of the systems is best?

A. Nope–I’m just trying to determine whether the midrange iMac looks pricey or reasonable when compared to all-in-one Windows PCs that are at least sort of similar.

Q. Please tell me your conclusions now–I’ve got a bus to catch in a few minutes.

A. Gladly–the iMac isn’t cheap, but it’s an okay deal overall.  On the downside, it doesn’t come with a TV tuner (no Mac does) and the keyboard and mouse are wired in the configuration I chose. But in terms of clockspeed, it’s got the fastest CPU of the machines I looked at, and is well specced in other areas. Bottom line: I don’t think anyone who prefers a Mac and isn’t interested in a Windows machine that’s not an all-in-one should sweat over the iMac’s price.

Q. For the love of Pete, will you please cut to the chase?

A. Sure, as soon as you click on to the next page…

That said, I’m sure enjoying reading the reaction to the story in the form of comments on the story itself as well as discussion elsewhere on the Web. As I mentioned in the story, I’m going to continue trying to answer the question in additional posts that compare different types of Macs to similar Windows machines, so this conversation is going to continue for awhile.

But some of the points that people have raised cry out for a speedy response. So with no further ado, an AfterFAQ on the story (which, I should repeat, is just round one in a series I plan to do):

Q. How come you didn’t factor in the fact that not all features are created equal? Surely the HP’s larger screen, faster CPU, and better graphics card are more important than the MacBook’s clever AC adapter, Gigabit Ethernet, and better service record.

A. I did cheerfully admit that I wasn’t going to try and weight each feature as part of my analysis. And I never set out to answer the question “Which of these notebooks provides the most features for the money?” If I had, the HP woulda won. But I wasn’t trying to prove that there’s no such thing as a Windows machine that delivers more for the money than a Mac–I was comparing the MacBook again three representative Windows-based competitors. It was more expensive than one, cost almost exactly the same as another, and was cheaper than the third. Sounds likeevidence that Macs aren’t by definition pricier than Windows machines to me.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t discount the value of the Mac’s AC adapter: I’ve carried bulky ones, and I’ve carried compact ones, and compact is better. And the Mac’s better service record is nothing to sniff at, either,

Q. This whole experiment is pointless because specs don’t matter that much anymore–you can’t judge a computer by them.

A. Depends on who you’re asking, but judging the MacBook and Windows rivals on factors that don’t boil down to numbers would be writing a far more subjective Mac-vs.-PC review. I may do that at some point, but this story wasn’t it.

Q. This whole experiment is pointless because the HP clearly had the best specs and only a dunce would buy a machine that cost more and offered less.

A. As I mentioned in the story, I think most smart PC buyers don’t fixate on fairly small difference in things like clockspeed, or fairly small (sub-$100) differences in price. Hardcore hardware enthusiasts would, of course, disagree with me.

Q. How come you didn’t penalize the MacBook for Apple’s practice of releasing OS upgrades more frequently than Microsoft, which will cost you money if you try to keep current?

A. As I mentioned, I didn’t try to do an analysis of overall cost of ownership–just the price for the box itself.

Q. How come you didn’t reward the MacBook for Apple’s practice of releasing OS upgrades more frequently than Microsoft, which thereby improves the Mac platform at a faster clip?

A. Again, that’s a factor beyond the initial purchase price. Plus, I understand that some people think that’s a minus!

Q. Why didn’t you compare the MacBook against laptops for sale in Best Buy? They’re way cheaper, and some have impressive specs.

A. Good point–I may do a sequel that takes that approach. I didn’t this time because I wanted to try and equip the machines as similarly as possible, and therefore chose custom configurations of the Dell, HP, and Sony. The stuff on the shelves at Best Buy is made up of fixed configurations, most of which lack some items that are standard on Macs, such as Bluetooth.

Q. You point out towards the top of your own story that the average selling price of PCs is about half the average selling price of Macs! With that fact already established, why even bother to investigate any further?

A. Because I wanted to do an apples-to-apples comparison with systems that were as comparably configured as possible. Those average selling prices are…well, averages, which reflect the fact that there are an array of Windows systems out there, starting with very basic machines at very basic prices. There are no budget Macs, except for the almost-forgotten Mac Mini.

Q. A lot of people will be perfectly happy with a basic Windows PC; there’s no reason for them to buy a Mac that costs much more.

A. Absolutely. And as I mentioned in the post, the variety of Windows computers for different types of people is a pretty compelling advantage over the much more limited selection of Macs.

Q. You “come across as a dedicated Mac user, and wanted the right answer.” What say you to that?

Um, I’m the only journalist I know who quit a cool job rather than quash a story that was critical of Apple–I would hope that give me a little credibility when it comes to covering this stuff. Actually, I had no idea what my research would show until I did it…and it’s quite possible that when I do similar comparisons for other Macs, I’ll come to different conclusions.

Keep the feedback coming! And thanks for reading Technologizer…

I started to put together this video timeline starting in the 1970s and working my way forward to the present day. Then I realized that it’s more fun–and much bloggier–to begin with current commercials and travel backwards in time. Join me, won’t you?

iPhone (2008): If you’re discussing Apple ads in 2008, you gotta begin with an iPhone one. Here’s “Unslow,” which I’ve already written about in excessive detail.

MacBook Pro (2007): I have mixed feelings about the “Get a Mac” campaign–the best ones are very funny, and John Hodgman is a gem. But sometimes their portrait of the PC–as a machine that’s mostly good at spreadsheets–feels like it hasn’t been updated since, oh, 1992 or thereabouts. I do, however, confess that I was tickled to no end when PC called my former employer, PC World, to complain about one of our articles. (Fun fact: A second ad that mentioned PCW was made at the same time, but shown on network TV only one evening before Apple decided to kill it–I’ve never seen it.)

iPod Touch (2007): Gazillions of Apple fans have uploaded homemade ads to YouTube. Nick Haley is the only one whose creation went on to become a real Apple ad. This is Nick’s version, but Apple’s is nearly  identical.

iPod Nano (2007): With its use of multiple Nanos in different colors, this ad for the current-generation Nano feels like it’s practically an explicit homage to ads for the multicolored original iMacs. Music by Feist–not to be confused with Ellen Feiss.

iPod (2005): Apple pulled its iPod ad with Eminem from the airwaves almost instantly–maybe because footwear manufacturer Lugz complained that it was eerily similar to a commercial it had released in 2002. Here’s a mashup that a YouTube user spliced together, mixing bits and pieces of both ads almost seamlessly.

PowerBooks (2003): This ad for Apple’s portables remains entertaining, but mostly, it makes me nostalgic for the 12-inch PowerBook, a computer I thoroughly enjoyed owning. If Apple made something comparable today with an Intel chip inside, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

“Desklamp” iMac (2002): I never owned one (or, come to think of it, any desktop Mac), but I loved the design of the second-generation iMac. It had a sense of humor, and I can’t think of another computer, Apple or otherwise, that I’d say that about. Apparently, though, it didn’t sell all that well, panache and clever ads notwithstanding.

Switch (2002): When this ad campaign premiered, trying to convince the teeming masses to dump their Windows boxes for Macs was a more idiosyncratic, unlikely quest than it became by the time the later “Get a Mac” commercials debuted. The most famous of the “Switch” ads featured teenager Ellen Feiss–this particular commercial is a follow-up to that one, and supposedly never aired. (Fun fact: I went to the same high school as Ellen, two decades earlier; back in my day, we used Radio Shack TRS-80s.)

iPod (c. 2001): Is this ad really from only seven years or so ago? The guy is goofy, the iMac looks retro, and even though it, like iPod ads to come, shows someone rocking out, it also feels obligated to try and explain the benefits of digital music. Eventually, iPod ads would become lifestyle celebrationse that assumed you knew what they were for, but this one is about a early-adopter gadget and why you might want it.

Power Mac G4 Cube (2000): When folks bring up the Cube–the only famous flop of Steve Jobs’ second Apple tenure–I always admit, in the interest of full disclosure, that I drank the Kool-Aid and gave it a good review in PC World. It had its issues as a workaday computing device (it was hard to get at the CD drive without shutting the machine off), but this much is undeniable: It looked fantastic in TV commercials.

Original iMac (1999): These days, so few computers are beige that it’s been years since I had reason to use the phrase “beige box.” When the original iMac debuted, though, the notion of a colorful computer was new and divisive: Some people bought the original iMac because they came in colors, while others spurned them for precisely the same reason. Here’s Jeff Goldblum, perhaps the last famous person to appear in an Apple ad as a more-or-less traditional pitchman.

Original iMac (1999): More Goldblum–in 1999, there were still people who were intimidated by e-mail and the Internet, and the original iMac was aimed at them.

Think Different (1997): The rational reaction to this ad, one of Apple’s most famous, is probably to scoff at its implicit comparison of people who buy a particular brand of computer to a collection of the last century’s greatest statesmen, artists, and scientific types. I gotta admit, though, that I find the ad moving. We Mac owners don’t deserve the comparison; Steve Jobs, in some ways at least, does. And this ad sure made clear that his return to Apple would not be business as usual. (Side note: The voiceover is by Richard Dreyfuss.)

Macintosh (c. 1995): It’s been an Apple tradition of surprisingly long standing to run both ads bashing Windows and one bragging that you can run it on a Mac. Here’s one from the Windows 95 era; it’s not specific about what means of putting Windows on a Mac it’s talking about, and I’ve forgotten what it was. (It’s not unreasonable to say that Boot Camp, Parallels, and VMware Fusion are the first means of running a Microsoft operating system on an Apple computer which are actually worth bothering with.)

Macintosh (c. mid 1990s): I’m not sure exactly when this Mac ad dates from, but it apparently comes from a forgotten age in which the Internet didn’t revolve around the Web (I do see Netscape Navigator briefly, tucked behind another window) but schools effortlessly streamed full-motion video over the Net.

Performa (c. mid 1990s): I include this commercial–dating from an era in which some Apple ads were still dedicated to simply explaining what a home computer could do–mostly because it includes a glimpse of eWorld, the short-lived Apple online service which is so obscure that nobody even bothers to make fun of it.

Power Macintosh (c. 1994): This ad was produced at a time when a bald guy in a suit was still visual shorthand for “important businessperson,” the After Dark screensaver was ubiquitous, and a Mr. Potato Head signaled wacky rebellion from corporate tradition. It was also a period in which Macs were so bedraggled that the only claim it appears to make about them is that they can read DOS floppies–which is just plain sad.

Newton (c. 1993): The comparison between the Newton and the iPhone has been made so many times that it’s incredibly trite–but it’s impossible to watch this Newton ad without thinking about it.

PowerBook Duo (1992): Many Apple innovations have had lasting impact on the computer industry. The idea of sliding a laptop into a desktop case like a giant VCR tape, however, did not.

PowerBook (c. early 1990s): The first Mac notebook ad involving a basketball player on an airplane–the great Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

PowerBook (c. early 1990s): I include this ad in part because “What’s on Your PowerBook” ranks among the better-known Apple campaigns–but also because the buttoned-down, bespectacled guy bragging about the mundane business applications he runs on his Mac (“org charts!”) is practically a proto-John Hodgman, except he’s arguing that Macs can be just as boring as PCs. Note also that the Internet only comes up in passing when he mentions e-mail, pegging this as an early-1990s commercial rather than a mid-1990s one.

Macintosh (c. 1990): After “1984,” Mac ads got incredibly tedious for years–in the Sculley era, they were full of guys in pinstriped shirts standing in anonymous offices discussing ROI. It’s as if Apple’s primary goal was to convince the world that Macs were just as lacking in personality as PCs. This is an ad of that sort, but it’s not bad, and it makes me nostalgic for the days of “portrait” displays.

Mac Portable (c. 1989): The Mac Portable was ungainly, illegible, and unaffordable ($6500), but Apple managed to make it look pretty appealing in this commercial. Note that in the late 1980s, it was still logical to address an ad for a pricey computer at people who weren’t very comfortable with computers. Also, setting the ad in an airplane terminal associated it with flying without showing someone trying to use this behemoth aboard a plane.

Apple IIgs (c. 1986): Here’s minimalism for you–this ad for the last iteration of the Apple II line makes no claims for the machine other than that it can be used to do homework.

Macintosh (1980s): This ad from Australia sports elaborate special effects, at least for a 1980s Apple commercial. In Australia, as in the U.S., wearing half-glasses is a sign of fabulous business success.

Macintosh (c. 1984): Twenty-four years ago, bitmapped fonts were kind of dazzling–even in blocky black-and-white–and Apple saved the exotic input device known as the mouse for the grand finale.

Macintosh (1984): Sorry to be sacrilegious–this ad, directed by Ridley Scott, has been called the best TV commercial of all time, but I’m not even sure if it’s ony of my ten favorite Apple spots. (I dunno–maybe it’s the utter lack of humor.) 1984 may not have turned out to be like 1984, but those IBM-using lemmings only grew in number in subsequent years, while the Mac struggled.

Apple IIc (c. 1984): In 1984, laptops as we later came to know them didn’t exist yet, and you could market a fairly svelte desktop (although I don’t think that term existed yet) as a sort of portable computer. I’m not sure how Apple got away with the image of a CRT monitor disappearing into the carrying case, though.

Apple II (c. 1981): As far as recall, Dick Cavett was the first celeb to do Apple ads, years before Jeff Goldblum, Eminem, and Mahatma Gandhi. Unlike those guys, he donned a jacket and tie for the occasion. For all the radical differences in Apple ads circa 1981 and circa 2008, they’re consistent in some ways: The voiceover performer in current iPhone ads has an urbane vibe that’s not unlike Cavett’s, as do multiple other narrators of Apple ads over the years.

Apple II (c. 1978): This ad, the earliest Apple-related one I can find, is from some local (Los Angeles-based?) an Oklahoma City computer dealer, not Apple itself–and even in 1978, its cheapo aesthetics probably gave Steve Jobs the heebie-jeebies. I think it’s kinda adorable, though, and I’m glad that somebody bothered to upload it to YouTube. The family that Pongs together belongs together!

Okay, which Apple ads did I ignore that I should have included? Are my takes on any of the ones I did include off-base? Lemme know what you think…and if it turns out that enough people are as obssessed with old computer ads as I am, I may round up more of ‘em.