MacWorld News — Intel-based iMacs on Sale Today; MacBook Pro for Pre-Order

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Steve Jobs’ keynote began at approximately 9:00 AM PST, and he spoke about the iPod and holiday sales, iLife ‘06, OS 10.4.4 … and he saved the best for last. As had been widely rumored, Apple introduced the first Intel-based Macs today.

Last year Apple promised to have Intel-based Macs by June of this year. At this point in the keynote, Intel CEO Paul Otellini joined Jobs onstage wearing a clean room suit, handed Jobs a silicon wafer and said “”Steve, I want to report that Intel is ready.” “Well, I can report to you that Apple is ready too,” Jobs said.

The first Intel-based Mac will be the iMac G5 (pictured above), available today. It will use Intel’s Core Duo chip from Intel, will have 17 and 20-inch versions, and is (according to Jobs) two to three times faster than the previous iMac. It’s available in the same design, with the same prices, as before.

Microsoft Mac Business Unit General Manager Roz Ho then came onstage to reaffirm Microsoft’s commitment to the Mac, and to Office. It was announced that Microsoft has signed an agreement committing to a minimum of five years of new Office versions. Jobs then reiterated the importance of the Rosetta translation software during the transition to Intel.

Finally, as he usually does, Jobs said “There is one more thing.” It was the MacBook Pro, the new Intel Core Duo-based notebooks. These are available for pre-order today but will not ship until February. Jobs stated they are four to five times faster than the Powerbook G4. The MacBook Pro will ship in 1.67GHz ($1,999) and 1.83GHz ($2,499) versions.

We Say: Much of this was anticipated, but it’s great that a company can manage to come in ahead of schedule for once. If these Macs scream as Jobs says they do, I wonder, especially with Intel CPUs, if we’ll be seeing more games that run on OS 10 and Windows? Of course, there’s no DirectX for OS 10, so that would hamper things, but as a gamer, I can dream can’t I?
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