Apple’s CEO: IMac with Intel inside ‘will knock customer’s socks off’
Province
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Computer Inc.’s historic shift to Intel Corp. microprocessors came months earlier than expected as CEO Steve Jobs yesterday debuted personal computers based on new “two-brained” chips from the world’s largest semiconductor company.
The first Macs to deploy Intel’s Core Duo processors will be the latest iMac desktop, whose circuitry is all built into the display, and the MacBook Pro laptop.
Yesterday, Apple’s Jobs was joined at the Macworld Expo by Intel CEO Paul Otellini to unveil the new jointly designed computers.
The new iMacs will have the same all-in-one design as previous models and will be available with 43-centimetre and 50-centimetre screens for $1,499 and $1,999.
Jobs claimed the new models are two to three times faster than the iMac G5, based on an IBM chip.
“With [the] Mac OS X [operating system] plus Intel’s latest dual-core processor under the hood, the new iMac delivers performance that will knock our customers’ socks off,” said Jobs.
The MacBook Pros — with 39-cm displays — start at $2,299.
The shift comes as Apple is on a streak with its hugely popular iPod music players. Earlier, Jobs said the company brought in a record $5.7 billion US in sales during the holiday quarter as it sold nearly three times as many iPods as it did in the same period a year ago.
But yesterday’s focus was on Apple’s Macintosh computers. Jobs said its entire Mac line will be converted to Intel by the end of this calendar year.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
