Apple suppliers are on the rise in Wednesday's Asian session, but shares of the tech giant itself in New York are soaring in after hours' trade, they are up more than 43-dollars or more than 7.5 percent. It's a far cry from the company's share performance over the last week - investors began to doubt Apple, pushing its shares down in 10 of the past 11 trading sessions. They were worried about a potential iPhone slowdown. But Apple continues to beat expectations and its competition. What will Apple do next? CNET Writer Josh Lowensohn constantly searches for that answer. He says rumors abound that Apple will start moving away from its Mac Pro desktops that have the big tower. The emphasis may turn to the lighter iMac and MacBooks especially the screens. Josh Lowensohn said, "One of the big rumors about any Apple computer so far, is that they are gonna move to a really high density display like something you are seeing in the new iPad and something like you saw in the iPhone 4, something where you would be getting about 4 times as many pixels that you currently have. But it also is wildly expensive to produce." Lowesohn says cutting parts like optical disk drives may be a part of Apple's continuing slim down effort. It also makes users more reliant upon using the App Store, as opposed to purchasing outside software. Josh Lowensohn said, "They key thing is you are taking out parts that are taking up space. And therefore you can make smaller machines. They've been very consistent over the years in wanting to shrink things down. But as you try to shrink these things down and cut out components and maybe switch to something smaller and cheaper the question is how are you gonna do that with something like desktop files like you traditionally have " Coming this summer is also Apple's new operating system, Mountain Lion. Lowensohn says it borrows some things from the iPhone's IOS operating system like notification center and game center. But it doesn't go nearly as a far as Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8, which uses one operating system to works across desktops, notebooks and tablets. Rob Enderie, Enderie Group, said, "Right now Apple is doing okay, I don't see any risk until the 4th quarter they run up to the 1.2 billion -plus marketing campaign of Windows 8. That's gonna be tough. That exceeds their annual of budget for marketing significantly. I mean apple's got the reserves but they've never spent that much to match. And Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs so that's when the real test comes for the company." Microsoft's single operating system for all seems like a simple idea. But designing software for notebooks, desktops and tablets isn't necessarily the same with touch or using a mouse or keyboard. That's why the winner of this tech giant showdown will need to not only win over consumers, but also software developers.
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