You know those ads for weight-loss products, acne medication, or wrinkle cream that show "before" and "after" photos of someone who's supposedly benefited from using the product? In particular, we're thinking about the ads for the really "questionable" products, like, say, a bracelet that is claimed to reduce fat throughout the body via healing magnetic waves, or whatever-- you know the ones we mean. In some of the more blatantly false ads in that genre, the "before" and "after" pictures seem to be two entirely different people... unless, of course, those healing magnetic waves not only stripped two hundred pounds from the subject's frame, but also magically bleached her hair, gave her a rich, golden tan, and made her three inches taller.

Forgive us, we're rambling again. The point (and there is a point, we promise) is that if you take a snapshot of Apple today and compare it to a picture of Apple from three years ago, you're going to swear you're looking at two different companies. And we're not even talking about the obvious things, like the financial solvency, the energized product line, and the tone of the media coverage. At a deeper lever, one of the fundamental differences we see is that the Apple of today seems almost unable to launch a strategy and have it fail.

For example, take that Internet strategy announced less than two months ago; the addition of iTools, iCards, and iReview to Apple's web site has drawn record-breaking traffic. As The Mac Observer notes, PC Data's numbers show Apple's web site as the most-trafficked site among those run by computer hardware companies. Apple's 961,000 unique visitors last week put it well ahead of the runner-up, Egghead.com's 793,000. Apple.com logged over three times as many unique visitors as the ninth-place site, Outpost.com; it's estimated that one out of every fifty-five people on the Internet visited Apple's site last week. For an online strategy, that's a far cry from the virtual Hindenburg known as "eWorld."

So the miracle balm Apple's been using for the past few years really seems to be doing the trick. (Can we get Steve Jobs in a handy, easy-to-apply ointment?) Sure, there have been a few less-than-spectacular successes; that "three pizzas" consumer loan wasn't the smash success it could have been, and even iReview's looking a bit tired, what with only those same eleven computer sites reviewed since it went live... but so far, we haven't seen anything quite as disastrous as Copland or OpenDoc. Thumbs up to Steve, and "before" and "after" pics we can really believe.