As the year draws to a close it's time to reflect back on how Apple has fared. The answer is pretty well. The Apple TV may have missed its mark, and Leopard may be the most difficult install of any version of OS X yet, but it's still leaps and bounds ahead of Vista. People have started to switch to the Mac too. Apple sold 2.16 million Macs during the company's forth fiscal quarter, which ended 30 September 2007. That's 400,000 more Macs than in any three-month period ever, since the Mac launched in 1984.

Exact figures on market share are hard to pin down, but both IDC and Gartner put the Mac's global share at around 3.2%. This might not sound much, but it is a significant rise compared to the 2.6% that Apple was claiming just three years ago. In the US, IDC puts Apple' market share at 8.1%, making Apple the third largest PC maker in its home market, beaten only by HP and Dell.

Then of course there's also the iPhone. I was just reading on the Net today that the iPhone already accounts for more of the web browsing market than all the Windows Smart Phones put together. Another report claims that it has already overtaken Windows Mobile phones in North America. That's pretty impressive. The iPhone has been an unqualified success, and it's pretty stupid to pretend otherwise, however that hasn't stopped PC Magazine listing the iPhone as one of the disappointments of 2007. Luckily its decision has already been widely ridiculed, so I don't need to do it myself .

All in all it's been a great year for Mac fans and Apple. And of course there's MacWorld Expo coming up in January, which will see Apple release yet more exciting products. Rumours of a small, maybe even sub-notebook portable abound, but what are you hoping for? iPhone nano, anyone?