Apple Inc. as i go on studying about it is becoming my favourite IT related companies,the reason mostly being the effectiveness of its workers and the control of its CEO Steve Jobs.
The Apple Inc. has adopted one of the most finest strategies as i see it,though the TIME magazine while on a feature about the company thinks differently

"Conventional wisdom says its strategy is wrong,yet it keeps turning out great products"

The strategy is wrong in the sense that Apple does all the jobs from manufactur of hardware for its software to the distribution and the Customer Relation Managment totally itself.The company CEO will never allow a software or hardware from any other company attached to its product.
For instance if we take the example of Microsoft,it designed all the Operating Systems and let the consumer or a user decide what hardware he has to run those with,this causes several fluctuations and Microsoft Operating Systems have been mostly not fully appreciated for the different bugs it has in different hardware.Apple on the other hand is quite different,it designs its own software to run with its hardware or software to run with its hardware and both the products rely on each other and it wont work with any other product from some other company,this makes sense and is totally reliable as well as compatible and effective.
Apple is gaining popularity day by day but the fact remains why does it lag behinds when it comes in competition with Microsoft,it is because Microsoft is more focused on change and Apple does not cares about only the change,it cares about the change in style and in comfort,that is why its slow and a bit expensive.