Apple Evolution

Related to my post on automotive evolution, here is an image depicting 30 years of evolution of Apple products from designer Edwin Tofslie (who has a lot of neat design work in addition to this):

You'll want to click for big. A lot of familiar machines are depicted here. I was just thinking about our old Apple IIGS the other day from when I was a kid. And there's the bulbous blue iMac we used in undergrad... and there are the Macs we used in graduate school... and there's the G5 I'm using right now! Ah, nostalgia attacks again!

Except for this:

I'm glad this is extinct.

Anyway, look it over, keeping in mind how evolution of technology relates to biological evolution. Look for overall trends and think about the selective pressures (or 'mutations' or 'genetic drift') that drove those adaptations. And perhaps try to imagine what the future Apple will look like.

And here are a couple more computer-related examples. I have no idea what's going on in either of these but what's interesting is the fact that they're represented as cladistic trees!