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Apple's iMac blossoms

In his Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs reveals that the iMac's new flavors are strawberry, lime, blueberry, tangerine, and grape.

3 min read
SAN FRANCISCO--Strawberry, blueberry, tangerine, grape, and lime--these are the five new flavors of the iMac.

Taking center stage at the Macworld Expo here, Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs announced

iMacs in five new colors
New iMacs come in five colors.
five new colors for the popular, modular iMac based on these five fruits, as well as new versions of the G3 Power Macintosh in a translucent "ice blue" case.

"We think one of the most important questions now is 'What is your favorite color?'" Jobs told thousands of attendees during his Macworld keynote. "This is far more important than the mumbo-jumbo associated with buying a computer.

"People don't care about that stuff," he said. "What they care about is, 'I want to express myself.'"

Available today, the new iMacs come with a 266-MHz PowerPC processor, a 15-inch built-in monitor, 32MB of memory, and a 6GB hard drive. Suggested retail price is $1,199. Older iMacs will be discounted to $1,049.

The announcement--along with Jobs's preliminary statement that Apple will next week report a fifth consecutive profitable quarter--was apparently well met: Apple's stock rose $2.03, or 5 percent, to $43.31 by the time the market closed today.

While the iMac's new colors were the biggest surprise in the speech, it was not the only bit of news. Apple is also releasing new versions of its G3 Power Mac desktop computers containing processors running at 300 MHz, 350 MHz and 400 MHz. Retail price, depending on the configuration, will range from $1,599 to $2,999. G3 servers, meanwhile, will sell for $3,299 and $4,999.

Like the first iMacs, the new G3s come in a translucent blue case. A large "G3" logo decorates one side of the new machines. A video presentation extolled the new look while Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" played in the background.

Steve Jobs



Steve Jobs shows off the new Power Mac at Macworld
The Power PC processors used in the new G3s will also use copper wiring, rather than aluminum. IBM and Motorola will manufacture the chips.

Additionally, the company announced the official release of the Mac OS X Server, a server operating system, and said it would begin to license the Open GL graphics technology from Silicon Graphics. SGI CEO Rick Belluzzo joined Jobs for the announcement.

Separately, Microsoft released a new version of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh while Real Networks released a preview of its G2 player for the Mac.

The thousands of Mac devotees who crammed into the auditorium seemed to be in a more upbeat mood than in previous Macworlds, a switch that can at least partially be attributed to the change in the company's fortunes. Sales appear to be growing again and Apple, according to various studies, seems to be getting customers outside of its traditional base.

Jobs, for instance, pointed out that 800,000 iMacs were shipped in 1998, double earlier estimates of 400,000. Moreover, a recent study from Audits and Surveys found that 32 percent of iMac purchasers are new PC users while 13 percent are "Wintel" converts. In total, that means that 45 percent of iMac users are new to the platform.




Hear Steve Jobs' entire keynote on CNET Radio
 

Through a bit of interesting math, Jobs actually said that the number of new users comes to 69 percent. He was counting current Apple users who bought an iMac but didn't do so to replace an older Mac.

The Wintel world was not far from Jobs's thoughts. While discussing the G3, a gasp went through the crowd when Jobs said the machines would contain processors from "Motorola and Intel" instead of "Motorola and IBM."

Despite the innovative focus on color, analysts said that Apple still has to stay focused on bottom-line pricing. Intel and the PC manufacturers released a slew of cheap desktops yesterday and further price cuts are expected in March.

"The choice of colors will help gain market attention, but they are still a bit more pricey than the machines in the PC area," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies.

Jobs also tried to dispel rumors that a rift had opened up between Microsoft and Apple after Apple executives testified in the antitrust action brought by the Justice Department, saying Microsoft had tried to compel Apple to give up QuickTime specifications.

"It's kind of like a marriage. It's terrific about 99 percent of the time," Jobs said. "One percent of the time we argue about stuff, usually about multimedia."