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That shows an 18% increase in Mac usage over the past 12 months, a figure that is not dissimilar to the rise in usage of Apple's Safari web browser, which accounted for 5.82% of all website visits in the first month of this year, 23% more than January 2007.

The figures show the impact of last year's 43% increase in Mac sales, and Banc of America analyst Scott Craig believes they will continue to go up. He told investors that sources in the Far East indicate that Apple has increased Mac production by a fifth.

"We continue to believe that desktops

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and notebooks are the key driver of the Apple story," analyst Scott Craig wrote in a report to clients Friday. "Both desktop and notebook production numbers have moved up by 20%+ from expectations in early January, indicating potentially solid demand thus far in the March quarter, as well as some inventory replenishment."

Further evidence, if it were needed, of Apple's continued renaissance comes from WebSiteOptimization.com, which reports that among streaming media players, iTunes now has more unique users than Real Player for the first time and is continuing to add users while the leading format, Windows Media, stabilises. (Incidentally, the figures make no mention of Flash, which has YouTube to thank for establishing it as the de facto standard for streaming video over the Internet.)

iTunes is also increasingly popular among US kids, at least that's what the kids themselves are saying. According to NPD, more nine- to 14-year olds use Apple's software to buy music than rely on p2p file sharing software. Of the 70% who download music, half said that they used iTunes while a quarter opted for free tracks from Limewire.