Jobs delivers Mactels "a little ahead of schedule"

Addressing a packed crowd of the Mac faithful, Apple 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. (See the video of Jobs' keynote.)

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 websites 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 line-up of Macintosh computers by the end of 2006.

He said: "We're a little ahead of schedule", with Intel CEO 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 announcementthat Apple would move to Intel chips, after years of using the PowerPC hardware made by IBM and Motorola.

Last summer, Jobs said 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.

Charlie Wolf, a financial analyst at Needham, said: "The critical thing they delivered on is what people, including analysts, were expecting. 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 $5.7bn in revenue for the quarter that ended in December. Apple's retail stores alone accounted for $1bn 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.

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

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 an 1.83GHz processor and a 100GB hard drive and will cost $2,499.

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

The company was light on the media announcements that have come to define Apple events in recent months. Jobs did say, however, the iTunes store will begin selling clips from Saturday Night Live and that more than eight 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 one billion mark in the next few months, selling about three million songs per day, he added.

He also introduced a new, $49 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 titbits, 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, faster version of iPhoto, including a "photocasting" feature that lets people create online photo albums accessible to others, adding that it is capable of handling up to 250,000 photos - 10 times the prior limit.

As expected, the software suite's biggest addition was iWeb, which allows users to make their own websites, 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 $79 price tag and will come free on new Mac computers.

Discussing the new iLife '06 suite, Jobs said: "It's a giant new release. It's going to propel us even further ahead of anything else in the world."

The company's consumer applications, including iLife, will run natively on the new Intel processors starting immediately, as well as on the Power PC chip. Professional audio, video and photo applications will be updated in March and customers will be able to buy a "crossgrade", or new version of the existing software, for $49, Jobs added.

Most other applications will run smoothly by using the translation software called Rosetta, which will come with every new Intel-based Mac, he said. Microsoft's Office will be one of those applications.

Microsoft Mac Business Unit general manager, Roz Ho, joined Jobs onstage to say the software powerhouse is moving ahead to create an Intel-based version of Office. She announced a deal between Apple and Microsoft under which Microsoft will continue creating new versions of Office for Mac for a minimum of five years.

The quick release of the Intel-based products has left some developers, who expected a few more months before release, scrambling to transfer their own applications over to an Intel-compatible version.

An Adobe spokesman said their Photoshop application would have to wait until the next scheduled update (which doesn't have a date attached yet) but their new Lightroom software will be released in Intel-compatible version sometime in the next few months.

Leaving no doubt that Apple would launch a marketing blitz around the Intel-based machines, Jobs showed off a new advertisement introducing the products - "Starting today, the Intel chip will be set free and get to live life inside a Mac."

Watch the video

John Borland writes for CNET News.com