Next-Gen Macs Take Center Stage

When the smoke that accompanied Intel CEO Paul Otellini and his bunny suit lifted during this year's Macworld Expo, there was little doubt Apple and its chief cheerleader Steve Jobs had made another splash. The big news: The first Intel-based Macs were ready to go, six months ahead of schedule.

But Jobs has a history of Big Shows during Macworld. Was this one really any bigger than the rest? And what do the new Macs--and all the cool software Apple launched--have to do with you? When you brush away the smoke, here's what was really important.

According to Apple's benchmark tests, the new dual-core Macs outperform their predecessors at least twofold, but the first machines to benefit from this extra horsepower are not Apple's professional-level towers (like the current Power Mac G5) or servers; instead, the consumer desktop iMacs now have Intel inside. These all-in-one Macs, with 17-inch and 20-inch screens, have very similar specs to their PowerPC predecessors and will sell for the same prices.

For his finale ("One more thing..." has become something of a catchphrase in his keynotes), Jobs revealed the new MacBook Pro notebook, which is also based on the Intel Core Duo chip. The MacBook will begin shipping in February and can be ordered now. It's all pretty heady stuff.

What can we glean from these Intel-based iMacs and notebook systems? Well, if there were issues with dissipating heat from the dual-core chips, we would have seen a different debut form factor than the iMac and MacBook Pro. But, according to Apple, the Intel CPU is very efficient and doesn't present extraordinary heat-management challenges.

PC World is now putting that claim to the "lap test", as well as checking out performance claims, so stand by. And notably, Apple's confidence in the Intel chip should mean good news for folks out there who have no interest in Macs, but are curious about how Dell- or HP-based systems will fare in Intel's new dual-core architecture.

The MacBook Pro is offered in just one size, with a 15.4-inch wide-screen display, and is slightly thinner than the current 15-inch PowerBook G4. And like the iMac desktops, it has an ISight Webcam built into the case, as well as the Apple Remote and Apple's Front Row software, for sitting back and viewing photos and playing video and music.

Jobs also told the eager crowd that the rest of the Macintosh line would move to the Intel platform during 2006. If Apple's goal is to give consumers the best computing experience possible, the inexpensive, compact Mac Mini could be next up for porting to Intel. Heat management may be more challenging in the machines' tightly packed cases, but the Mini fits nicely into home entertainment setups, so it's ripe for the Front Row treatment as well (Front Row is not available for all Macs).

Get an iLife

Before dropping the big news about the Intel-based hardware, Jobs showed off new versions of Apple's consumer digital media suite, iLife, and productivity suite, iWork. The software demos made more sense in light of the new hardware, because while iLife and iWork contain some welcome new features, major upgrades of the pair didn't seem necessary, since they are only a year old, and ITunes (part of iLife) saw a couple of updates in 2005.

But the '06 incarnations of iLife and iWork are examples of the "universal binary" format that Apple is asking developers to create applications in. Universal binary applications run natively on both Intel Core Duo and PowerPC Macintoshes. Apple's successful demonstration of dual-platform software products (Jobs apparently ran the software on Intel-based systems) bodes well for users of what will soon be legacy PowerPC-based systems.

And the new features in iLife '06 seem worth upgrading for--Intel compatibility aside--although the retail price is $79, with no discount for owners of previous versions. In earlier versions of ITunes, Apple adopted and popularized podcasting for listeners; with this version, Apple is making it easy for nontechnical users to record their own podcasts and publish feeds of other content types as well. GarageBand has built-in podcast-recording tools, and IPhoto now lets you syndicate and publish photo albums, a feature Apple calls "photocasting." Notably, however, you have to be a subscriber to Apple's .Mac online service to take advantage of these abilities. Though .Mac is required to publish photocasts, anyone who knows how to subscribe to and receive an RSS feed can view a photocast. The .Mac service is priced at $100 per year for one user; it provides e-mail, online storage, software, and more, but it does not include an Internet connection.

Hurray! Blogs!

In the '06 suites, Apple also finally addressed blogs. When the word processor Pages was released as part of iWork '05 a year ago, its Web-authoring tools were skimpy, and none specifically handled Weblogs. Rather than putting Web-authoring tools into Pages, Apple created a new app called IWeb and made it part of the digital media suite iLife.

IWeb has a slew of templates for different types of personal Web pages, including photo albums and blogs, and a variety of page designs in Apple's signature graphic style: contemporary, lovely, and oh-so-tasteful. As in Pages, you click to type over the placeholder text and drag and drop images onto the page. The designs are modifiable as well, using the same tool set that's in Pages.

IWeb is tightly integrated with .Mac, but you can use it to publish to other Web servers as well. Though some of the page templates could be adapted to business use, they are designed for creating personal Web sites.

On the productivity side, Apple gave Pages and Keynote (the presentation application in iWork) the ability to count: Although the suite does not include a full-blown spreadsheet, basic calculations can be done in tables in either application.

None of these developments was a radical departure or a shock, as the move to the Intel platform was six months ago. They were more like pleasant surprises. We'll see if real-life experience with the products stands up to the expectations.

Rebecca Freed is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.