Dive into OS X

During his quarterly financial results call, Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer and Tim Cooke (COO) revealed that the company will make a key “product transition” that cuts back on its profit margins to help shut out rivals.

A frequent point of discussion during the hour-long call, the mystery transition will drop Apple’s gross margins from 34.8 percent in the spring quarter to just 31.5 percent in the July-to-September window in which the update takes place, ultimately settling at about 30 percent during Apple’s fiscal 2009.

Oppenheimer is deliberately short on details, not wanting to pre-announce the product or allude to its nature, but explains that cost will be a driving factor.

The new, unnamed product will continue to have “technologies and features that others can’t match,” according to the CFO.

So what does this mean? Obviously lower margin products are coming, but will they be entirely new products or lower prices on existing products? There’s a big chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros at a lower price and slightly redesigned iPods.