Jobs: New Intel Macs are 'screamers'

SAN FRANCISCO--Addressing a packed crowd of the Mac faithful, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday served up the first Intel-based Macs, introducing a new high-end laptop and a revamped iMac.

The new machines both include Intel's Duo dual-core chip. The iMac will come in the same sizes and sell for the same prices as the current models, but the Intel chips make it two to three times faster, Jobs said. A new laptop computer, called the MacBook Pro, will be available in February, he said.

In addition to the crop of new Macs, Jobs announced a new version of the iLife suite that adds a tool--iWeb--designed to make it easy to create Web sites with video, audio and blogs, and new features meant to simplify the sharing of photos over the Web and the creation of podcasts.

Jobs said Apple would transition to an all-Intel lineup of Macintosh computers by the end of 2006.

"We're a little ahead of schedule," he said, with Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini joining him onstage dressed in a head-to-toe "bunny suit," the protective suits that workers wear in chipmaking facilities. "These things are screamers."

The release of the new Macs comes just seven months after Jobs shocked the computer world with an announcement that Apple would move to Intel chips, after years of using the PowerPC hardware made by IBM and Motorola.

Jobs said last June that Apple would have computers ready to ship by June of this year. Beating that mark by almost half a year will help ease a transition some feared would result in several quarters of diminished sales, analysts said.

"The critical thing they delivered on is what people, including analysts, were expecting," said Charlie Wolf, a financial analyst at Needham. "They have begun the Intel transition sooner rather than later."

Still, Jobs took pains to dispel any notion of a current slowdown in Apple sales. In an uncharacteristic announcement, he said the company had a record $5.7 billion in revenue for the quarter that ended in December. Apple's retail stores alone accounted for $1 billion in revenue, he said.

That included sales of 14 million iPods in the holiday quarter, with more than 32 million of the music devices sold over the course of 2005. Those figures, at least as much as the new products, impressed analysts.

"They could have announced dog food and the stock would have been up five points," Wolf said.

The new iMac line will include a 17-inch, 1.83GHz version, selling for $1,299, and a 20-inch, 2GHz version for $1,699.

Once released in February, the MacBook Pro line of laptops will include a $1,999 model running at 1.67GHz and featuring a 15-inch screen. That version will also come with an 80GB hard drive and a new infrared sensor to use with the Apple Remote control device. A second version will feature a 1.83GHz processor and a 100GB hard drive and cost $2,499.

Focus on creating media, not selling it
The company was light on the media announcements that have come to define Apple events in recent months. Jobs did say, however, that the iTunes store will begin selling clips from "Saturday Night Live" and that more than 8 million videos have been sold through the iTunes online store since October.

The iTunes Music Store has now sold about 850 million songs and is on track to pass the 1 billion mark in the next few months, selling about 3 million songs a day, he added.

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Hmmm...twice the speed
by make_or_break January 10, 2006 1:20 PM PST: Guess that settles the performance question between PowerPC G5 versus the Wintel processors. AMD is the fastest.; Reply to this comment View reply
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Dual Core???
by January 10, 2006 1:35 PM PST: Um, lets see, Dual Core vs Single Core. Ya, might be a bit faster...; Reply to this comment

Marketing Hyperbole
by EmbSysPro January 10, 2006 1:36 PM PST: People, Please try to understand the difference between "speed attained" and work performed?, anyone who has seriously looked at the different cpu architectures that are continuously involved in this argument will tell you that ?THESE ARE MYTHS?. Intel?s architecture excels at speed. AMD?s architecture excels at work and the PowerPC architecture excels at both, while not leading at either. Steve Jobs is doing what he does best, selling ice to Eskimos.; Reply to this comment View all 2 replies
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$1299 for an Intel Apple machine???
by lingsun January 10, 2006 2:18 PM PST: $1299 for an Intel Apple machine??? I'll stick to my Windows XP-AMD 3800+ for $720. Why are the prices so high? Just to discourage anyone who doesn't own one from ever buying one? I don't get it. Does Apple make $500 per computer?; Reply to this comment View all 7 replies
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Eating My Words!
by Mister C January 10, 2006 5:03 PM PST: An Intel based Mac that has a Linux based OS. Looks like it is time for a big plate of Humble Pie! To all you Mac-aholics I take back all the bad things I said. And M$ does it again, snatches defeat from the jaws of victory!; Reply to this comment View reply
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ExpressCard?
by joelwest January 10, 2006 5:14 PM PST: Apple's ahead of the curve with ExpressCard, but is this sane? With USB they gave up their proprietary ADB, but here they're giving up an established standard for a new one that (they hope) will catch on soon. None of the big 3 (US) cell phone carriers offers data cards in this format. Will they? Given their active neglect of Mac users, until Dell (or maybe HP) owners start demanding ExpressCard it isn't gonna happen.; Reply to this comment View all 3 replies
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Any Multi-Core Programs?
by startiger January 10, 2006 5:42 PM PST: Dual care chips, in any box, PC or Apple, still have one thing limiting their proformance. The programs. Dual core processros only combine two processor cores into one chip. YOu still have to have both an OS and programs that actually take advantage of both processors. While the majority of modern operation system (except XP Home) support two processors, and therefore dual core chips, Last I checked, unless you were running server applications or high end (much higher than the adverage user will ever run) aapplications, the vast majority of software out there does not take advantage of anything beyond the first processor. While eventually multi-core processos look like they will become standard, right how, how many people have programs that actually use that second core? In a year, when a hot new game come out that requires a multiple processor system, they may grow in popularity with programers, but untill then, the adverage user is not going to see much differance between a single and a dual core chip of the same clock speed. FOr now, they are great for marketing to people who don't know what they are listening to and a reason to add several hundered dollars to the price of a computer. For the time being, because the idea of a multi-processor in the adverage computer is still new, who actually makes software to put that second core to use? So this "screaming mechine" will only be slightly facter than a single core mechine of the same clock speed to the adverage user. Marketing math is at it again.; Reply to this comment View all 6 replies
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Like evertyhing but the name
by discern January 10, 2006 7:10 PM PST: MacBook is hard to say. I know Apple wants to distance itself from PowerPC by dropping "Power" from its brands but MacBook Pro?! How about iBook Pro? There could be iBooks and iBook Pro models. Just my $0.02. All in all, I'm impressed. Saving my pennies.; Reply to this comment View reply
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Writer
by ROFLance January 10, 2006 11:16 PM PST: Whoever wrote this should have finished middle school before attempting to prove any points. I found 20 typos and numerous grammar mistakes in this article. If you need someone to write grammatically correct and typo-free articles for you, come to me.; Reply to this comment View reply
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Screamers
by mcthingy2 January 11, 2006 8:19 AM PST: Someone should tell His Steveness that a "Screamer" roughly translates as "flambouyant homosexual" in UK.; Reply to this comment