New Apple products exceed expectations, put pros first

Steve Jobs gave Macworld Expo 2006 plenty to get excited about in the early part of his keynote, unveiling fresh editions of iLife and iWork, Apple's personal media and productivity suites, respectively. Among other advances, iPhoto introduces photocasting, an RSS publish/subscribe photo album for .Mac subscribers. A new iLife application, iWeb, creates Web sites and blogs using pre-set Apple templates; those who prefer a bit more freedom and creativity can use iWork's Pages instead, which also incorporates 3D charts and tables with calculation.

The big news, without a doubt, is the early delivery of Intel-based Macs. It's not really early--it was a given (at least I considered it so) that Apple would roll out x86 Macs at Macworld Expo, and the commitment of Steve Jobs to the keynote on December 1 '05 confirmed this in my mind.

What I didn't expect is that Apple would start the PowerPC-to-Intel transition with two products that I consdier to be in its commercial lineup. I figured the pure consumer push would come first. My choice for Apple's second-in-line Intel Mac, iMac, came first. Apple's all-in-one, computer inside a display desktop, in familiar 17 and 20-inch models, will get rolled out with Intel guts, with no other changes in form factor, price or functionality. I predicted that iMac would get just this overhaul, but I said Mac mini would go first. As my wife says, that doesn't get me a cookie. Perhaps it earns me a picture of a cookie.

The other surprise, one that completely knocked me on my butt, was the introduction of an Intel-based 15-inch notebook called MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is the spitting image of the 15-inch PowerBook G4, but with a tiny iSight Web cam mounted on the lid and an IR receiver on the front next to the lid release button. The machine will be $1,999 for a machine with a 1.67 GHz Core Duo, and $2,499 with a 1.83 GHz CPU. Both will have 667 MHz front-side bus, keeping them more or less in line with PC notebooks.

I fully expected to leave the keynote pleased, but not delighted, impressed, but not enthusiastic. As it turns out, I'm delighted and enthusiastic. Apple went after the commercial market first with its Intel-based machines. Issues I have with the Intel move, including the dearth of Intel-native OS X applications, remain.

Steve Jobs demonstrated the PowerPC-based Photoshop running the only way it can on an Intel-based iMac, slow as hell under Apple's PowerPC emulator, Rosetta. As it happens, the emulator is also the only way to run Microsoft Office for Mac, which Microsoft is wisely discounting by 50 percent for new Mac customers because its performance in PowerPC emulation will fall by at least that much.

Apple covered the basic graphics and productivity bases with Universal Binary editions of iLife and iWork, and I have to say that these apps are the way to go. But I've long thought that; Office is overkill for many uses, and $79 for iWork gets most of the job done.

Coming full circle, I couldn't be more jazzed about Apple's first new Intel-based Macs. They're hitting my audience, and me personally.

As for the PowerBook G4 I have sitting in my lap now, I want out, now. What about the Power Mac G5 Quad at my lab back in Texas? That's a tough call, but then again not so tough. It stays, but come Summer, it's toast, and if Intel isn't there with a CPU that matches it, I'm moving to Darwin (the open source core of OS X) on dual CPU, dual core Opteron until Intel catches up.