News
Apple Ships First Intel-based iMacs
- By Stuart J. Johnston
- January 10, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs debuted the first new iMacs based on Intel CPUs at the
company’s MacWorld Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday -- two of them available
immediately.
The new iMacs -- two desktops and two notebooks -- are built around Intel’s
Core Duo dual-core processors and run Mac OS X. The design includes a built-in
video camera for video conferencing out-of-the-box, and a remote control.
All four new machines feature a SuperDrive for DVD burning, and between 512MB
and 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, which is expandable to 2GB, hard drive storage
up to 500GB (on the desktops), and graphics driven by an ATI Radeon X1600 video
card with 128MB of GDDR3 memory, the company said in a statement. Additionally,
the new iMacs include built-in 10/100/1000 BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, AirPort
Extreme for 54Mbps wireless networking, and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data
Rate).
The systems run on Mac OS X version 10.4.4 and include Apple’s Rosetta
software translation technology, which is planned to be enabled in most OS X
PowerPC applications.
A 1.83Ghz desktop system with a 17-inch display starts at $1,299, while a 2Ghz
desktop with a 20-inch monitor starts at $1,699. Both are shipping now. The
new MacBook Pro running at 1.67Ghz and with a 15.4-inch display costs $1,999
while one with a 1.83Ghz processor costs $2,499. The new MacBook Pros will ship
in February, the company said.
About the Author
Stuart J. Johnston has covered technology, especially Microsoft, since February 1988 for InfoWorld, Computerworld, Information Week, and PC World, as well as for Enterprise Developer, XML & Web Services, and .NET magazines.