well of course they do. but what was the goal when the company started up? when they first introduced the Macintosh, Power Mac, and iMac?

I'm becoming less impressed with the technology's that apple is creating (here comes the, 'well leave then' 'go to the dark side' comments, but really lets just skip over that).

OS X is great of course, but whats more important? the new dashboard feature coming in Tiger, which does look cool and i have no idea how customizable it is (i'm hoping greatly), could be great.

How about the dock though? Do i need to keep updating and installing 3rd party software to make a basic feature functional? Key phrase- do i ... obviously talking about myself here, but i think most people would welcome some change to the dock.

and other software? Where is AppleWorks? It's been years. I'd much rather use AppleWorks than Office, but when was the last major upgrade?

I love iLife. Starting with iTunes, going into iMovie and all the way through. Until, GarageBand. Do the people who use iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, or iDVD also want to compose their own music? I bet some do, probably not most. The most, probably don't want to pay for GarageBand either - but apple is making money off of it.

The iLife package, and applications individually have matured greatly in the last four years, while something as basic as AppleWorks is left just hanging out.

iLife is certainly a sign of the trends, which we all know apple has been on top of and even has predicted/produced many of these trends. But what happened to providing the essentials for what the computer was used for before iMovie?

Hardware? Can i get a new suitable iMac for $1299 again please? I generally purchase right in the middle - i don't need the best, but can afford something better than the least. The $1299 - $1799 gap is huge. Give me a 17" with the 15" specs for $1499?

I could just spend that $1299 on a new 20" cinema display though.

These are only my thoughts and what i've been thinking lately ... thoughts?