Apple ready to go 'Back to the Mac'

Apple, and possibly CEO Steve Jobs, are expected to unveil new Mac laptops on Wednesday.

In recent years Apple's business, and the hype surrounding it, have been driven by smartphones, tablets, TV boxes and hand-held media players.

On Wednesday, the company plans to refocus its attention on its original product: computers.

The electronics maker will hold a news conference, dubbed "Back to the Mac," Wednesday on its Cupertino, California, campus. CNN will be covering the event, which starts at 1 p.m. ET.

Apple is spring-boarding from a record quarter for its computer division, having sold 3.89 million Macs between late June and late September. While the company sold more iPhones, iPods and iPads than Macs, profit margins on desktops and laptops are generally higher, so they make up a crucial part of Apple's revenue.

Little was said about Apple computers during the company's quarterly earnings call Monday. But we can glean from statements by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, that the company will likely not introduce a new iMac at the event.

That desktop line was updated in July, Oppenheimer noted in the meeting.

Steve Jobs, Apple's prominent co-founder and chief executive, was also on that call. It's not known whether he will take the stage Wednesday, as he often does, but Jobs was animated in the earnings meeting, eager to talk in depth about every Apple sales and innovation triumph -- except in desktop or laptop computers, which he never mentioned.

Online speculation points to a new MacBook Air laptop -- Apple's smallest and lightest model -- and an update to OS X, the Apple operating system that hasn't seen a revision in a year.

This expected version 10.7 of the operating system, following Apple's big-cat theme (past versions have been nicknamed Panther, Tiger and Snow Leopard), is believed to take the name Lion.

[Source]