Monday, January 14, 2002		On Hardware

iMac design resets the Apple cart

APPLE Computer unveiled a radical new design for its most popular desktop computer - the iMac - that squeezes the guts of the machine into a domed base sprouting a futuristic flat-screen monitor.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the newly redesigned iMac computer during his keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2002 in San Francisco. The new iMac features a 15-inch LCD flat screen that floats in the air allowing users to easily adjust its height or angle.

The new iMacs, which feature Apple's most-powerful microchip, the G4, and 15-inch monitors, will ship this quarter, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said at the Macworld Expo trade show.

The new entry-level model will be priced at $ 1,299, and all of the new machines will run the PowerPC G4 processor that Apple had reserved for high-end computers.

The top-of-the-line iMac, which will ship by the end of this month, will be priced at $1,799 and will include a drive capable of writing data and transferring video to DVDs, the company said.

"We expect demand to be large," Jobs said.

The announcement of the new desktop computer line and a 14-inch portable iBook PC capped weeks of speculation over what new products Apple would unveil at Macworld, a venue to promote upcoming software and hardware releases.

In an industry marked by increasingly tight margins, Apple's strategy has been to lure consumers with radical designs and other features that promise ease-of-use, particularly in digital media such as video and music.

Sales of the current line of candy-colored iMacs have flagged recently. "They really should have done this last Macworld," Rob Enderle, an analyst at technology researcher Giga said.

But by incorporating what had been premium features, including flat screens and the G4 chip, into its flagship platform, Apple is also challenging its own business model, some analysts said.

That could open an opportunity to expand the company's flagging 5 per cent share of the personal computer market, but it will also mean facing the risk that the new iMacs strip demand from its existing high-end offerings, analysts said.

"It almost feels like a change in the pricing strategy," said one financial analyst.

Apple engineers and designers have been working on the new all-in-one iMac for the past two years, Jobs said, conceding that some of Apple's users and distributors had been hoping for a quicker release of the new desktop.

But he argued that the radically revamped design that allows the iMac's flat panel screen to pivot out from the computer's half-globe base had been worth the wait.

"This is the best thing, I think, we've ever done," Jobs told the Macworld crowd.

In the past year, Jobs has said Apple's strategy was to release the computer-linked products and software that it sees as central to a new "digital lifestyle." The latest announcements complete that process, Jobs said.

"We've now got the complete digital hub for the digital lifestyle," Jobs said.

In addition to the new iMac, Apple said that it would make its OS X operating system standard on all new Macs and unveiled iPhoto, which lets users create slide shows of digital photographs and order prints and custom-bound photo albums online.

The original iMac series, hailed for its colourful designs and translucent cases, was a hit for Apple when it was released in May 1998 and Apple has sold over 6 million iMacs to date, making it one of the most popular computer lines. (Reuters)