Nearly two months ago, Apple introduced a renewed lineup of the Macbook, Macbook Pro, and Macbook Air laptop computers. Aside from the revolutionary new design and updated processors and graphics cards, I feel that there were disappointingly few new feature set upgrades. Apple still hasn't jumped on the wagon and added integrated memory card readers, nor have they begun to venture into the netbook market, a quickly growing niche in the PC market. Admittedly, an Apple executive was recently quoted as saying something along the lines of "Apple simply can't make a sub-$500 computer that isn't a peice of junk."
I admire Apple for their quality and product longevity, but price is still an issue for many people. For anyone but spec-obsessed buyers with money on their minds, Apple computers are a little out of most peoples' budgets. Also, making a large part of the new Macbook and Macbook Pro chassis out of a single block of aluminum can be costly to repair or replace. while highly unlikely, the chassis can cost nearly half the notebook's worth to replace, since it cannot be repaired with a smaller peice, as in older models.
One other point is that in my honest opinion, besides for the netbook market, Apple is still missing the boat on another huge area of the consumer market. These days, people own almost undoubtedly four things: A computer, a music player, a cellular phone, and a digital camera. Apple makes three of these four things. Of course, for those of us who know our history, Apple DID in fact release a line of Digital Cameras in 1994, called the Apple QuickTake. Many know the release (and subsequent discontinuation in 1997) of the QuickTake line as one of Apple's biggest blunders, since it was overshadowed by the already extant presence of Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm cameras in the market already.
However, with Apple's ever-growing popularity and success, now would be a perfect time for the release of an agressively priced (key word) consumer digital camera. Good design features that could be included would be an aluminum unibody similar to the Macbooks, minimal physical buttons(such as power and shutter), a large touchscreen using gestures and multitouch to zoom and change settings, as well as review pictures, editing them right on the camera, and simply dragging them to a corner of the screen to delete. All this could of course be included in a package that caters to both Windows and OSX. However, a stupid(yet Apple-like) move would be to create an Apple-specific memory card format similar to Sony's MemoryStick. However, a possibility could be the ability to wirelessly sync Apple's camera with and Apple computer wirelessly.
Along with being a good product idea for Apple, a digital camera would also pave the way for Apple to begin to put memory card slots into its computers as a standard feature.'
While it would likely not be accepted widely by the professional photography community, but would still be a smart and profitable move for Apple.