Apple made financial strides on the back of the iPhone, iPod and Macintosh lines, while questions over the health of co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs left some wondering over the long-term future of the company.
As has been the case since 1997, Apple kicked off its year with a keynote address from Jobs at the Macworld Expo.
The event saw the unveiling of the MacBook Air, a super-thin notebook which sported no optical drive and weighed in at just 3lbs.
The keynote also introduced new backup devices and announced that iTunes would begin allowing movie rentals in which users could download movies and watch them over a 24-hour period.
One thing missing from the keynote was a major announcement regarding the iPhone. Two months later, Jobs fixed that when he unveiled a software development kit for the handset and announced plans for an online application store.
Later in the year, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G, an updated version of the handset which sported a faster 3G connection as well as GPS hardware and improved battery life.