Pret a porter profits

'Dahhling! So wonderful to see you again. Mwah! Mwah! Did hope to catch up with you at Milan or Paris, but your collection today was simply gorgeous - especially that little diaphanous iMac number ...'

Alright, the computer business still has a way to go before it joins Armani or Prada on the international catwalks, but when Apple launched its jellyfish iMac in August, revealing the machine's most intimate details in a way that might have made even Vivienne Westwood blush, it was making not only a fashion statement, but marking a new era in the annals of IT.

And as last week showed, Apple's naked daring appears to have paid off when it reported its first profitable year since 1995. Much of that success is thought to have been fuelled by sales of the iMacs of which, at the last count, some 150,000 had been sold - many to first time PC buyers, the rest to former Wintel users presumably fed up with their Clark Gable-approved boxes.

It looks as though the PC industry, having evolved from niche interest sector to high volume commodity business, all in less than two decades, has nowhere else to go except in the direction of fashion.

Remember too it was Steve Jobs, co-founder and current interim chief executive of Apple who, when he was with Next computers, also set the latter up as a design leader with its nifty black PC cubes.

It seemed the ploy then, as now, is that if you're deemed stylish enough, you can charge a premium for your wares and get away with it. It's an evolution that bears comparison with the car industry, albeit over a far shorter lifecycle.

Would Ferrari be where it is today if, like Henry Ford, it obstinately offered its machines only in black and shaped with all the panache of a Queen Victoria perambulator? Think back too to those early 80s PCs, four-square and coloured like a Boer War poultice. Twenty years on, the technology may have changed dramatically, but the style?

Jobs is onto something - exuding that little extra that traditional Wintel markers either don't understand, or just can't measure up to, any more than Microsoft boss Bill Gates or Intel chairman Andy Groves might slip comfortably into one of Alexander McQueen's (groin) mincing creations.

Trouble is, as with the fashion industry, if you're to command a premium, it means being exclusive, which in turn means limiting availability. Many Apple resellers moan about the company's inability to meet demand for its PowerBooks and I wouldn't be surprised if the same accusation was levelled about iMacs before long. And yet demand for Apple's latest computer remains high and, for once, the vendor is back in profit.

Fashion has its rewards.

A footnote to this saga might be Apple's decision to air-kiss goodbye to next week's AppleExpo show. Olympia's not fashionable enough, perhaps, and attracts too many anoraks? Don't mean to be catty, but just not on is it, dahhlings? Mwah, mwah!

Dave Evans is a freelance IT journalist.