Apple acolytes see a crack in Windows!

[Dashken]

APPLE'S acolytes may not be in heaven just yet, but they are convinced the latest sermon from prophet Steve Jobs means they're on the road to the promised land of more Macs and fewer PCs.

When the Apple Computer chief executive took the pulpit at Macworld in San Francisco last week he told the faithful the company would make its biggest effort yet to entice PC users to the Macintosh platform, with a range of Intel-based machines.

Although the company's plan to dump the IBM-developed Power PC processors in favour of Intel chips was announced last year, Apple has managed to surprise watchers by unveiling the first machines months ahead of schedule.

The new machines, based on Intel Core Duo chips, offer performance improvements and lower power consumption than the Power PC.

IMacs using the new chips have started shipping and a new Core Duo-based notebook, dubbed the Apple MacBook Pro, is expected to be available in Australia in February.

Apple's shift to Intel has been heralded as a watershed for the technology sector as the chip giant has long been seen as a close ally of a major Apple rival, Microsoft.

Australian Apple resellers have been selling iPods for two years with little evidence of the much-vaunted halo effect, expected to result from PCs users loving the little music player so much they switch to the Mac.

Now they say the announcement is a key step in turning the Mac into a home entertainment hub and converting Microsoft Windows users that way.

"Everyone wants to sell millions of Macs, but it all starts with baby steps," said Ben Morgan, operations director of Apple Centre Taylor Square, Sydney. "Apple has finally come of age, with the world's largest CPU manufacturer building processors for the Mac."

Mr Jobs shared the Macworld stage with Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini.

Intel had had more than 1000 developers working on the Apple project, Mr Otellini said.

Mr Jobs did not announce any new product lines or additions to the successful range of iPod portable music players, but he did reveal their role in Apple's revenue rise.

Apple's sales leapt 63 per cent in the last quarter of 2005 on the back of iPod sales, Mr Jobs said. It sold more than 14 million iPods in the quarter, up from 4.5 million in 2004's final quarter.

"That's equal to 100 sales every minute, 24 hours a day for the entire quarter," he told the gleeful audience of Apple devotees.

There was a fair bit of glee in Australia too, where Apple resellers have spent the past couple of years looking in vain for the halo effect.

"In the initial year the halo effect from the iPod was small, and as a reseller I can tell you it was small," Mr Morgan said.

"In year two, the halo got larger. The number of customers buying the Mac is still small, but it's people who would never have bought one."

Resellers, some of them less than enthusiastic about Apple's decision to open up the iPod to Windows, are now starting to see the Mac as an easier sell.

Others say an always-strong core of Mac loyalists is being supplemented by a growing band of new recruits.

"They will buy Macs in the future because they're serious about entertainment, just as they buy Macs now because they're in love with the iPod," Next Byte joint managing director Tim Kleemann said.

"It's clear that Apple intends to be the leader in media management."

Other announcements at the conference included a new version of Apple's iLife software suite, which allows users to create and distribute everything from digital photos and video footage to podcasts, and a new version of the iWork productivity bundle.

Apple product marketing worldwide vice-president David Moody said moving from the G5 processor used in earlier iMacs to the new Intel chip resulted in performance improvements of between two and three times.

"Because the old PowerBook was not able to use the G5 for thermal reasons, the performance jump is even higher," Mr Moody said.

"The new notebook has a performance jump of four to five times."

Apple had spent considerable time ensuring that users would find it easy to migrate to the new platform, Mr Moody said.

Apple's OS X operating system already runs natively on the Intel platform, and users moving to an Intel box can expect exactly the same look and feel.

Apple has developed software called Rosetta, bundled with the OS X operating system, for users who want to run old applications on Intel-based Macs.

"It is possible there are some people out there who were looking at buying Apple but perhaps have a question mark because they have been in the Intel world for so long," he said.

"This levels the playing field and people can decided based on asking what the computer can do for them."

Apple confirmed that its entire hardware range would be moved to Intel chips by the end of the year.

"The old hands are saying: 'Oh no, is Apple becoming another PC company," Mr Morgan said. "But it's still Mac OS X, it's just the hardware that's changing."

Also at the conference, Apple announced a newly signed agreement with Microsoft to continue developing the Office for Mac software bundle.

Microsoft Mac marketing manager Amanda Lefebvre said the five-year agreement "gave certainty" to the ongoing relationship and assured customers that development would continue.

"We have been developing software for Macs for 20 years and have some eight million users of the Office for Mac package," she said.

"It continues to be an important market for us."

Source: http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...nbv%5E,00.html

[Donutey]

as soon as apple people realize they are buying pc's it might be a watershed moment...

of course it seems intel is bringing down the costs of macs, so there might be hope yet for os x...