Jobs: New Intel Macs are "screamers"

Addressing a packed crowd of the Mac faithful, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs 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.

	Steve Jobs introducing the new Intel-based Macs.

"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 US$5.7 billion (S$9.32 billion) in revenue for the quarter that ended in December. Apple's retail stores alone accounted for US$1 billion (S$1.63 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 US$1,299 (S$2,122.89), and a 20-inch, 2GHz version for US$1,699 (S$2,776.59).

An unexpected surprise, the Intel-based iMac.

"The MacBook Pro is the fastest Mac notebook ever, obviously," Jobs said.

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.

He also introduced a new, US$49 (S$80.08) FM radio and remote control accessory for the iPod. Most rival MP3 players already offer FM radio as a standard feature.

Aside from those media tidbits, Tuesday's announcements were focused on the new generation of consumer software, much of which has been seemingly inspired by the success of podcasting and is designed to help Mac users distribute movies, photos and audio more easily over the Net.

Jobs spent considerable time demonstrating the new version of iPhoto, which includes a "photocasting" feature that lets people create online photo albums. Other people can subscribe to these albums, just as they do today with blogs or podcasts, and have new photos downloaded automatically to their own computers.

The new iPhoto is faster and can now handle up to 250,000 photos--10 times the prior limit, he added.

The GarageBand music-production software has also been updated to include a podcasting studio, which streamlines the process of making a radiolike show and posting it online.

As expected, the software suite's biggest addition was iWeb, which allows users to make their own Web sites, complete with audio, video and photos drawn from the company's other applications, in just a few minutes. The entire software suite will keep its US$79 (S$129.11) price tag and will come free on new Mac computers.