Holy cats, what a difference a year or two can make. Not very long ago, the overwhelming sentiment in the tech industry was that Apple Computer had ceased to be at all relevant, and it was only a matter of time before they tanked and faded into obscurity. Today, things have turned around a lot: Apple's been profitable for a straight year, ending two years of red ink; the product line is as powerful and exciting as it's ever been, sending sales figures drifting upward; Steve Jobs is still "temporarily" heading up the company, and he's still taking names and kicking butt while smiling for the cameras; and all of that "Apple will be dead or bought out within three months" talk has pretty much subsided. Happy news for all of us in the Mac community, right?

What we didn't expect was that Apple's newfound success would have such a positive effect on the rest of the personal computer industry-- but that's just what Deloitte Consulting is claiming in its latest "Critical Industry Trend Evaluator Report." According to Webintosh, Deloitte claims not only that the PC industry is strong right now, but that Apple's recovery is the "single biggest contributor" to the industry's overall strength and long-term optimism. One of the things that Deloitte does is assign a percentage value to the factors contributing to the "Hope Index," an indicator of confidence in the industry. Apple was slapped with a 0% in 1996; today it carries a whopping 40%.

Sure, Deloitte's CITE Report is just the collective opinion of one batch of industry observers, but the very fact that anyone could cite Apple as the most significant factor in the long-term strength of the PC industry is very significant. It's the kind of thing that makes you take a step back and realize just how much things have changed. Heck, it was only fifteen months ago that Jobs killed the clone market by buying out Power Computing, which many observers at the time thought would be Apple's death blow-- remember that angst-a-thon? So while things aren't perfect at Apple, we're still really glad that among the biggest problems perceived by the user base these days are "not enough slots" and "I miss my floppy drive."