A Big Day For the Mac.

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 10, 2006

Today was the official dawn of the Macintel era. May it be long and prosperous for all concerned. Here’s a rundown of today’s announcements from the Steve Jobs Keynote:

• The MacBook Pro: A 15.4-inch notebook with an Intel Core Duo microprocessor. From $1,999.
• The iMac, also with an Intel Core Duo Processor. Starting at $1,299.
• iWork ‘06 with Pages 2, an update to Apple’s word processor, Keynote 3, its latest presentation app. $79 Available for a 30-day free trial.

• iLife '06, including new versions of iTunes, a new version of iPhoto, updated iMovie HD, iDVD 6, GarageBand 3, with support for creating Podcasts and iWeb a new Web-publish app.
• The iPod Radio Remote, which will give your iPod the ability to tune in to FM radio stations. (A feature that many non-Apple MP3 players already have, but which rarely works well on those players, in my experience.)
• Quicktime 7.0.4, which fixes several Quicktime Bugs.
• A promise from Microsoft to continue developing Office for the Mac and MSN Messenger into 2011. Plus Redmond also promised to deliver by March a version of its Entourage email application that supports syncing with handheld devices.
• News that iPod sales exceeded expectations by not only exceeding, but blowing way past the 10-million unit mark. The new high-water mark is 14 million units for the December quarter. Apple will also hit about $5.7 billion in sales.
• Mac OS 10.4.4 was officially released today.
• We also got a preview of a great new ad touting the Apple/Intel partnership, which you can see in Quicktime format here.
• No sign of any Apple-made TV screens, digital video recorders, or wireless phones.
• A video of the keynote itself is here.

  In other interesting Mac- and iPod-related developments today:

• GPS device-maker Garmin said it would start making its devices Mac-friendly. I've written about Garmin for years, and every now and then when talking about their products, I would nudge them that they should be paying attention to the Mac -- and even suggested it once during an interview with CEO Min Kao.
  
• Quark Express 7 is coming out in a universal binary supporting both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs by the end of January, with a final version to follow.
  
• Levi-Strauss announced jeans with a special iPod pocket.
  
• It also looks like Sling Media, the company behind the Slingbox, which lets you watch TV shows recorded at home from on your computer from wherever you are, is on track to support the Mac. A full version of the SlingBox for the Mac is expected in the second quarter of the year.
  
• We say goodbye to the PowerBook brand, which has been a part of the Mac lexicon since October of 1991, when Apple first unveiled the PowerBook 100, which if I remember correctly was a machine that Sony built for Apple. PowerBooks are however, still available in Apple's online store.
  

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/