Report: Apple To Launch &#36;499 Mac
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TechWeb - Apple enthusiasts say that in January Apple will unveil a sub-&#36;500 Mac designed to entice Windows users who own iPods to make the computer switch.
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The Safari browser is going Windows, Mac OS X Leopard has some 300 new features, and the iPhone will let Web 2.0 applications come aboard. Did these announcements on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs match the anticipation?
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Apple may have failed to anticipate early adopters' anger over a $200 price cut, but the radical move reveals Steve Jobs' audacious plan to rocket the mobile device into the mainstream. Cult of Mac commentary by Leander Kahney.
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Apple reported strong earnings for its fourth quarter on Monday, boosted by record Macintosh computer sales and the shipment of 1.12 million iPhones.The company beat analyst estimates with net income of $904 million, or $1.01 per share, compared with $542 million, or $0.62 per share, in net income reported in last year&#39;s fourth quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial estimated a consensus of $760.45 million in net income and earnings of $0.84 per share for the quarter ended Sept. 29.The company reported $6.22 billion in revenue, up from $4.84 billion in the fourth quarter last year. The revenue consensus from analysts polled by Thomson was for $6.07 billion.For fiscal 2007, Apple reported net revenue of $24 billion and net income of $3.5 billion, said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple&#39;s CFO, in a conference call with financial analysts.Looking ahead, the company estimates that revenue will hit $9.2 billion with earnings per share of $1.42 for the first fiscal quarter of 2008, Oppenheimer said.The company shipped 2.16 million Macs during the quarter, a 34 percent growth over the year-ago period, Apple said in a news release.Mac sales increased worldwide, spurred by back-to-school promotions, said Tim Cook, Apple&#39;s COO, on the call. In addition to rapid growth in the U.S. and Europe, Mac unit shipments also increased in Japan, a major market where Apple has traditionally struggled to grow, Cook said.Shipment of Mac notebooks, including MacBook and MacBook Pro, grew 31 percent year-over-year and accounted for 62 percent of all Macs sold, Oppenheimer said.Given the success of this back-to-school period, Mac sales could be flat in the upcoming quarter, Cook warned.Sales of the iPhone are outpacing those of the iPod during the first few months after its 2001 introduction, Cook said. The company shipped 1.39 million iPhones during the year and saw a spike in sales after a $200 price drop of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399 in September.Apple is confident it will sell 10 million iPhones in the next calendar year, Cook said.Apple sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, a 17 percent year-over-year growth. iPod has sold 120 million units to date, Oppenheimer said. The upcoming holiday shopping season will be a big quarter for iPod sales, Oppenheimer said.Apple had a busy quarter with multiple product announcements.Last month, it unveiled the&#160;iPod Touch, a portable multimedia player with a touchscreen user interface and Wi-Fi capabilities. It also announced availability of the iPhone in Europe, with U.K. network operator O2 (UK) Ltd. slated to start shipping the device in November.The company is excited about entering the Europe market, and plans to enter the Asia-Pacific market in 2008, Cook said.On the software front, Apple announced iWork &#39;08, its office applications suite, in August. Mac OS X Leopard, Apple&#39;s latest operating system, will begin shipping later this week.This story was updated on October 22, 2007
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- Apple Inc  said it sold more than two  million copies of the latest version of its operating system,  Mac OS X Leopard, since its release on Friday.
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Even pouring rain and gusty winds didn&#39;t stop the Mac faithful from turning out for the release of Apple&#39;s Mac OS X Leopard at the Apple Store in New York&#39;s SoHo neighborhood Friday night.The sidewalk in front of the store and around the corner was a sea of colored umbrellas as about 200 people lined up to be among the first to purchase Leopard in North America. Those who hadn&#39;t prepared for the weather hunched under pieces of cardboard or just got wet as people bustled past on busy Prince Street and wondered aloud what all the fuss was about.The New York launch was part of a worldwide rollout of Leopard, which went on sale at 6 p.m. local time around the world Friday, beginning in Australia and New Zealand. Rain also plagued the&#160;Leopard launch in Tokyo, which marked the first place the OS went on sale at an official Apple Store, but didn&#39;t deter users from lining up ahead of the time there, either.A New York Mac enthusiast named Adam was first in line outside the SoHo store, saying he arrived at 2:00 p.m. and was joined about a half hour later by other Mac enthusiasts. Strangely enough, Adam, who owns three Mac computers and frequents Apple Stores when the company launches new products, was not there to buy Leopard. He merely wanted the free T-shirt Apple was giving out to people waiting in line to purchase the OS.&quot;They&#39;re difficult to get unless you live in Cupertino and can go to the Apple store,&quot; he said, adding that he would purchase Leopard in about six months after Apple had &quot;worked out the kinks.&quot;Unlike Adam, others shivering in line said they were there to be among the first to get their hands on Leopard. Still, it wasn&#39;t just the OS that inspired people to wait in the rain. Douglas Packer, also of New York, said that although he was looking forward to using Leopard -- particularly its new Time Machine and Spaces features -- he was also was there &quot;for the experience.&quot;&quot;Everyone&#39;s more excited about it, and being here with other people waiting makes it more fun than just a piece of software,&quot; said Packer, who works in video production.Time Machine is a new feature in Leopard that allows for automatic backup of files, while Spaces enables the user to create and manage virtual desktops.Another user waiting to purchase Leopard who gave props to Time Machine was Evan Herman, also of New York. But he also said he was &quot;probably the only person in line&quot; excited about the Back to My Mac feature of Leopard, which makes it easy for users to set up the ability to remotely log in to a Leopard machine from anywhere.Herman said this feature will make it easy for him to help troubleshoot problems on his parents&#39; Mac, which he finds himself doing often enough on the phone anyway.Herman switched from Microsoft Windows to a Mac three years ago when he left a position providing desktop support to PCs. He said he regularly joins the queue for major Apple releases and has stood in line for both the Tiger release of OS X and the iPhone.Leopard is the first major upgrade Apple has made to its OS in two and a half years. The software will be installed on all new Apple computers, or costs $129 for an upgrade. Apple has said the vast majority of Macs sold over the past four years will be able to run Leopard, as well as some older machines, depending on their configuration.
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Leopard went on sale at the Apple Store in Tokyo on Friday evening, part of a global launch that will unfold around the world over the next 24 hours.
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When Steve Jobs hits the keynote stage at the 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15, he will face a ballroom full of bloodshot eyes, a sea of journalists, analysts, and bloggers knocked loopy by the culture shock of going to sleep in Vegas (where the Consumer Electronics Show was just held) and waking up in San Francisco. Talk about your tough crowd.Fortunately, Jobs doesn?t need to kick into charisma overdrive to capture minds, hearts, and wallets. This year?s conference is already a banner event, a coming-out party of sorts for a Mac platform that has seen its biggest evolutionary kick since the demise of the original Mac OS. The combination of OS X Leopard and new Macs based on Intel?s Penryn CPU will help Mac outsiders remember that Apple sells more computers than phones.iPhone, take 2 What will happen this week? Only Steve Jobs knows for sure, but here?s my best guess.Although Leopard and Penryn have pushed the Mac to dizzying heights and should thus gain some stage time, the Macworld Expo keynote will still go heavy on iPhone and iTunes. And this time, the hype will be justified. eBay will be awash in mint-condition, used iPhones the day that Apple ships the new model that links to AT&amp;T?s fast 3G network (in the U.S.). With the speed of the 3G cellular data network, lots of RAM space for cached maps, and a close partnership with Google, iPhone could blast a tunnel through the in-car navigation market. CES was packed with navigation newcomers, but none has the hook of iPhone?s multi-touch interface, much less the capability to make phone calls and purchase music from iTunes.Another indirect but even farther-reaching benefit derived from the faster cellular network is iTunes Tagging. When listeners with compatible receivers are tuned into terrestrial and satellite radio stations that have licensed iTunes Tagging, they can purchase music that catches their ear with a button press. This will see its greatest uptake among users of Mac and PC iTunes, but iPhone owners could have the song downloaded before the radio is done playing it. No more trying to figure out the title of a song from the words in the chorus.iPhone?s support for native applications will see its official debut in February, but third parties are undoubtedly already on board. If Apple doesn?t take up navigation, the likes of Telenav and TomTom surely will. Voice-over-IP would make a great keynote demo, and with native application support, Apple might not have to write it in-house.Do pre-show announcements clear the stage for new notebooks? Apple always gets what it considers to be its lesser product announcements out of the way just before Macworld Expo so that Steve Jobs can focus on the high-percentage pitches in his keynote.The pre-keynote rollouts for 2008 are Apple?s specialty machines: the Mac Pro desktop/workstation and Xserve rack-mounted server. Both have been reworked for Intel?s quad-core Penryn family Xeon CPUs, nicknamed Harpertown. Mac Pro buyers can now get 8-core systems for about $1,200 less than before, and the Harpertown Xserve is the first 8-core server Apple has ever sold. Both systems also support significantly faster front-side bus and memory speed. This sort of performance kick might go unnoticed by most home and mainstream commercial users, but Mac Pro and Xserve buyers are going to love it.With the power user, workstation and server Mac announcements out of the way, Apple has room on the Macworld Conference and Expo keynote stage for new notebooks. The story there isn?t necessarily limited to Penryn. AMD recently announced its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series GPU (graphics processing unit) for notebooks. Among the new GPU?s attributes are improved power efficiency, PCI Express 2.0, and direct HDMI output. The new ATI GPU has one other feature: on-chip decoding of HD and Blu-Ray DVD content. It may be a long shot for this Macworld Expo, but there is a high-def DVD-equipped MacBook Pro on the near horizon.What to do after the keynote Those Macworld Conference and Expo Attendees who don?t fly home after the keynote will be treated to a packed schedule of sessions targeting audiences from home users to scientists and IT professionals.Macworld Expo?s organizers -- IDG World Expo, which has the same parent company as InfoWorld -- have also managed to pack the exhibit hall. Attendees will find familiar faces such as FileMaker Pro, REALbasic, and the venerable BBEdit programmer?s editor, but they?ll also see Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Xerox, VMware, Parallels, Iomega and, of course, Microsoft.Next to Leopard, Office 2008 for Mac will be the best-selling software for the Mac this year. It?s not only the first native version of Office for Intel Macs, but Microsoft?s first Office designed from scratch for OS X. The Mac faithful may outwardly jeer Microsoft for taking four years to catch a clue, but they?ll be buying Office along with all other commercial Mac users. Office 2008 will be just one of many new products showing at Macworld Expo that don?t need Steve Jobs to sell them. They?ll sell themselves.
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By Paul Jackson, senior analyst. With its new iMac G5, Apple Computer has once again come up with a unique package of design, power and ease of use.
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&quot;Rumord reports of a $500 Macintosh has got many industry watchers wondering how this will affect Apple&#39;s standing within the computing market place.
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Thousands of Mac enthusiasts gathered Tuesday to see what Apple Computer Inc.'s Steve Jobs will unveil next to keep his company on its recent roll.
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Apple Computer's newest iMacs now come in three sizes--a 17-inch, a 20-inch and a new 24-inch--and feature Intel Core 2 Duo chips.
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The update to Apple's Mac OS X operating system, called Leopard, went on sale at the Apple Store in Tokyo on Friday evening, part of a global launch that will unfold around the world over the next 24 hours.
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Apple on Tuesday added a 1.8GHz single-processor Power Mac G5 desktop computer to its arsenal. The US$1,499 system is offered alongside dual-processor computers running at 1.8GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.5GHz.
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Apple is planning to use a new PowerPC 970 processor in future Macs that will run multiple operating systems simultaneously, an executive of IBM&#39;s server technology division has revealed.
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Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled a very small &#36;499 computer on Tuesday and a flash memory-based music player called the iPod Shuffle for &#36;99.
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Apple added two new products to its line both at $499. This sets the stage for the price cuts later this year.