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NEW YORK -- Apple Computer kicked off this week's Macworld conference and expo here by announcing upgrades to its iMac and Power Mac G4 product lines, and pledging that the Mac OS X version 10.1, the first major upgrade to its recently released operating system, will ship in September.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs pleased the crowd with a demonstration of some of version 10.1's improvements, including faster application launching, more elegant windows resizing and a moveable dock, improved networking capabilities with Windows PCs, and the capability to burn data CDs from the Finder.

Jobs also introduced new systems, including three Power Macs with processor speeds running at up to 867MHz. The new computers are housed in silver-colored "quicksilver" cases.

Priced at $3499 and scheduled to ship in August, Apple's new high-end model will be a Power Mac G4 featuring duel 800MHz processors, 256MB of memory, an 80GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive--a CD-RW/DVD-R combination manufactured by Pioneer and adopted by Apple earlier this year for use in its high-end machines.

Two new Power Mac G4s are available. Apple's $2499 machine has an 867-MHz processor, 128MB of memory, a 60GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive. For $1699, the company offers a Power Mac with a 733-MHz processor, 128MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive, and a CD-RW drive.

Updating iMacs

Apple made less radical updates to its aging iMac product line, trimming prices and upping iMac processor speeds to 700MHz. Two new iMac configurations are now available: a $999 iMac with a 500-MHz PowerPC G3 processor, 128MB of memory, and a 20GB hard drive; and a $1299 iMac with a 600-MHz processor, 256MB memory, and a 40GB hard drive. A 700-MHz model with 256MB of memory and a 60GB hard drive, priced at $1499, is slated for August availability. Each of the new models includes a CD-RW drive.

Apple's last major Macworld New York system debut was short-lived: The Power Mac G4 Cube, introduced last July, was recently scrapped because of poor sales.

Jobs devoted the first hour of his keynote to touting the Mac OS X, released in late March. A parade of Macintosh developers took the stage to demonstrate how their applications are optimized for the operating system.

A Quark representative previewed an update to the QuarkXPress publishing program, which will allow easy print-to-Web content transitions. Connectix showed its upcoming Virtual PC for Mac OS X software. And Blizzard Entertainment (a division of Vivendi Universal) drew loud applause for its preview of Warcraft III.

"Warcraft III is a simulation of the Microsoft-America Online competition next year," Jobs said.

Chip Wars

His demo-laden speech wasn't entirely bug-free. A display of version 10.1's DVD player had to be restarted when the DVD failed to launch properly. Also, Jobs' attempt to show version 10.1's digital camera interfacing capabilities was repeatedly thwarted by the camera's refusal to turn on.

Jobs also devoted part of his keynote to defending the G4's chip speed, which is lower than processors from rivals such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Apple dispatched Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president of hardware, to deflate the "megahertz myth" and tell the audience why Apple considers the G4's architecture superior.

His talk culminated in a head-to-head showdown between an 867-MHz G4 processor and Intel 's 1.7-GHz Pentium 4, handling a variety of multimedia-heavy rendering and encoding tasks. Naturally, the G4 easily beat the Pentium, although an audience member noted after the keynote that Apple stacked the deck by choosing applications well-suited to its operating system and architecture.

"Put a G4 running Quake against an Intel [processor] running Quake, and then see how it stacks up," suggests Michael Depsky, who works in systems support for a software developer.

He says he'd like to see Apple come out with a machine featuring a 1-GHz processor. "Maybe next time," he adds.

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