MacWorld Keynote Announces x86 iMac & Laptop

Steve Jobs began giving his keynote at 9am local time, PST. The action was posted live at MacRumorsLive, and Engadget. From the Engadget liveblog: "How many [iPods] did we sell last quarter? Some of the estimates were getting astronomical - 8 million, 9 million. I'm really pleased to announce that last quarter we sold 14 million iPods .. that is over a hundred every minute, 24/7 throughout the quarter. And it still wasnt enough. We've now sold over 42 million iPods -- as you can see the curve is going up again" MacWorld and Ars Technica has coverage as well. The shiniest news: MacBook Pro. iSight, Front Row; $1999 1.67 Core Duo; 667 DDR bus, Radeon x1600; $2499 1.83GHz. Intel chip.

Comments

still has a 1 button mouse.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to have "PRO" in the name, you better give pros the tools the want and need.

Warning to AAPL stock traders

[bigberk]

Yes, Apple does have amazing products. Lots of us (including develoers) are switching from Windows platforms to Mac ... BUT if you were thinking of buying AAPL stock because of all this good news, I encourage you to think again.

Technical people, such as computer scientists and engineers are notoriously bad at stock trading. One of the main reasons is we fail to comprehend how the financial / stock world can fall way out of line with reality.

In the case of AAPL stock, the price has gone up 8x in just two years. In stock traders terms, AAPL and GOOG are definitely bubble stocks -- nobody is doubting that the companies are great, but the stocks have gotten out of hand. A high stock rise like this indicates extreme expectations of where the company will be in a couple years. However, it is highly unlikely that a company as old and large as AAPL can grow that fast.

Anyway, my point to this is that before you go and buy AAPL stock just because you think ipods are cool, consider that you are buying at a tremendously high price because a mountain of other people have already priced in very great expectations from the company. It is really unlikely that AAPL stock will make you a capital gain over the medium or long term; just beware that whenever you buy a stock, you should very closely monitor it (every week for sure) so that if it starts to fall, you exit without suffering too great a loss.

Re:Low Resolution

[imsabbel]

Considering Macs are targeted at non-geeks and those people even bitch that 17" tfts with 1280x1024 "have such tiny letters", i guess its decent.

Horrible summary, zonk

[billybob]

Jesus, you didnt even mention that the new "mac books" are intel based! Which is obviously the biggest news... and half your summary is a quote from steve jobs about how many ipods they've sold... no one cares! Give us the news that matters :P

Re:Chip Speed

[cortana]

Didn't you know, you can get a 100% speed boost by putting any CPU inside a case designed by Jonathan Ive.

Re:The MacBook Pro

[Shanep]

I dunno but for the extra ~$550, I could get a much faster laptop than the MacBook *or* I could get the Gateway and have the money in my pocket. Many speculated as to the actual Apple premium, but they couldn't directly compare the PPC Apples to the x86 notebooks. Now we can and the premium is at least $550. I would have guessed it would be $200 to $300, but now we know for sure.

Will you be able to run OSX on that Gateway without worrying that you won't be able to get updates or otherwise an update might break the install? Some people would actually like a fast laptop to run OSX on. The fact that you could also run Windows, Linux, BSD's, etc multi-booting is nice too.

I spec'd that Gateway as close as I could to the higher end MacBook, with CPU, RAM, Screen, Warrantee, Creative web cam, (removed Office 2003), etc and came out to $2,023.96.

A $475 difference, so close to your difference on the lower end. Yet the Apple has:

o A decent built-in high res camera.
o Built in remote control sensor and supplied remote.
o It appears to be metal, like older powerbooks.
o Can take 2GB of RAM.
o Has a premium (quality and price) Mobility X1600.
o And the R&D that makes it, the OS and apps seemlessly integrated and stable like Microsoft could only dream of (XP Pro SP2 blue screened on me just 2 days ago when I installed a driver. I have never seen OSX die on me).

So some of that will come out of that $475 and what could we be left with? Thinking Apple are terrible for charging a little extra for what looks like yet another fantastic product which fits into the experience they provide?

BTW, I am writing this in WinXP Pro on a comparably priced (when I bought it) Sony VAIO VGN-A49GP (with a PuTTY screen of OpenBSD in the background watching pflog0 and all the zombie Windows machines hitting my perimeter, plus a switched off Mac mini to my right and a crap load of Sun's ;). So I am not some raving Mac zealot. Truth be told, I am usually inside a BSD in a sparc64. That's where I like to be, then my Mac for surfing, email and movies and then Windows when I don't have a choice.

For a LOT of people, the small extra cost is well worth the ability to run OSX officially on a fast laptop while getting the Apple experience and support, even if it is just periodical updates. I've been using PC's for about 17 years now (Apples and Commodores before that) and newer Apples for a few years now. I bought this Sony because I needed fast memory and lots of it (2GB) in a portable, however my money was intended for a decent Powerbook which just did not come in time. I think Apple is worth the small premium when it meets your requirements. G4 didn't for me, but this seems like it would.

BTW, my $5,000 AU Sony is plastic and feels it. When I open and close the screen it creaks like it's about to break. Just like all the other shitty plastic x86 laptops I've used. When I open and close PowerBooks in the stores, I just want to sob. There is a huge difference with the WHOLE experience and I don't think it is fair to sum it all up against a couple hundred bucks.

That's just my opinion. Now toodle off and go finish that Gateway purchase. God I am so glad they have left Australia. Ever tried to deal with Gateway support? Last time I rang them to get some RAMBUS memory upgrade for a client of mine, they asked for the serial number, which I gave and then they confirmed with me the owner and model spec details. I ordered more RAM and I figured since they knew the machine model and config they sold, that they would know to send TWO modules totalling our desired upgrade size. Was that unreasonable to expect? When they ask first for the serial number and then confirm the exact model and configuration? Well apparently it was. The Indian "help"desk guy sent ONE module, so we had to later order another. What was the point of referencing the serial number against the configured spec? It never ceases to amaze me how computer companies don't use COMPUT