Next generation of Macs on display
By Terril Yue Jones
Los Angeles Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Computer Inc. unveiled yesterday its most powerful computers to date, a line of high-end machines that completes the company's transition to processors made by Intel Corp.
Mac Pro desktops will have two of Intel's dual-core Xeon processors, Apple Senior Vice President for Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said during a showy presentation kicking off Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
The Mac Pro has processors up to 3.0 gigahertz, which makes it twice as fast as the PowerMac desktop it replaces, and has a hard drive memory capacity of up to 2 terabytes — or 2,000 gigabytes.
"One of the great features of Xeon is that you can hook up two of them and get quad-core performance," Schiller said. "The customers who will use Mac Pro are often in science or the creative arts, from professional video editing to protein modeling. For customers like these, there's never enough performance."
A Mac Pro configured with 2.66 GHz processors and a 250-gigabyte hard drive will cost $2,499, while a similarly configured Precision workstation from Dell Inc., the world's largest PC maker, costs $3,449, Schiller said.
"What Apple is showing across all product lines and software is that they know how to execute," said Van Baker, an analyst with technology consultant Gartner Inc. "The fact that they did complete the transition to Intel microprocessors in less than a year is their strength. That's the stick in the eye to Microsoft."
Microsoft Corp. has been dogged by repeated delays to the next generation of the Windows operating system, known as "Vista," now expected in the first quarter of 2007.
Cupertino-based Apple's Chief Executive Steve Jobs also previewed the next generation of the Mac OS-X operating system, called Leopard, which is due next spring.
Leopard will incorporate numerous new features, including one called Time Machine that automatically backs up the entire PC to an external hard drive or server computer, allowing users to retrieve files and programs that were deleted or lost in a computer crash.
