Apple has its eye on more than iPods

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Computer sold 32 million iPods in 2005, but the company made a point of putting the "Mac" back in Macworld Expo this week. In fact, to the surprise of many, Apple made no iPod product announcements other than a $49 add-on that combines a remote control and an FM radio receiver.

(That didn't stop third-party companies from capitalizing on the iPod's staggering success: At least 50 of the 300 vendors at the show offered iPod cases or other accessories.)

But another figure was as significant: Apple sold 1.25 million Macs during the last quarter, compared with 1.05 million sold in the year-ago quarter, demonstrating that the personal computer is still very much an important part of the company's business.

And it was the Mac that captured everyone's attention at the show, specifically with the release of the new MacBook Pro laptop (www.apple.com/macbookpro/). Shipping in February, the MacBook Pro appears at first much like the current 15-inch PowerBook G4, but with a tiny iSight video camera embedded above the screen.

What's notable, however, is that the MacBook Pro is the first Apple notebook powered by the Intel Core Duo processor. When Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs announced the transition to Intel processors last year, he said that machines would start to appear in mid-2006, and that those would be low-end machines. Leading off with an Intel-based PowerBook replacement caught many by surprise, since laptop engineering is usually more rigorous than desktops.

But is the MacBook Pro really a true PowerBook replacement? While Apple claims a tripling in average performance (varying by application, of course) over current PowerBook G4 models, there are a few surprising omissions.

For example, the MacBook Pro includes one FireWire 400 port, but not the higher-speed FireWire 800 port found on the current 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4 models. Although FireWire 800 is not required for importing digital video (one of the most popular uses of FireWire), it does allow for faster data transfer to external hard drives. The MacBook Pro also does not include an S-video out port, making it less desirable as a mobile video editing Mac.

I bring up video editing because that's one market Apple has aggressively pursued; the very existence of the 17-inch PowerBook G4, an almost ludicrously large size for most laptop users, points to Apple's effort to woo high-end professionals. Another example of this commitment: In March, Logic and Final Cut Studio, professional video and audio editing software packages, will be available as universal binary versions — meaning they will work on Mac computers running on the new Intel chips. Currently, those programs won't run at all on Intel-based Macs because of the tight processor integration required to handle the demands of working with audio and video.

However, these issues aren't likely to affect most Mac users, which is part of the reason Apple omitted them from this model (also absent is a built-in modem), and why the MacBook Pro is likely to be a big seller for Apple. As the desktop Macs have advanced in speed, the PowerBooks and iBooks have lagged. People who have been holding out in hopes of faster machines finally have a replacement.

I admit that there's some hesitancy about buying the first-generation Intel-powered Macs (which also includes the new iMac desktop, shipping now, but because its other features are unchanged from the previous version didn't receive as much attention). We won't know if all the bugs that inevitably accompany a major platform change have been shaken out for a few months, so some people will no doubt wait and see what the early adopters report.

If you find yourself needing a replacement Mac laptop between now and March (which I believe is a more realistic shipping date unless you happened to place your order right after the keynote address), you can still buy all three models of the PowerBook G4 (12-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch).

Apple also updated its "digital hub" suite of applications, rechristened iLife '06 and featuring a new application: iWeb. As you might expect from the name, iWeb is aimed to be a Web page-creation tool for the rest of us (to steal an old but good Apple line), and it looks impressive.

I'd not had any hands-on experience with it by press time, but based on the demonstrations I saw, iWeb just might be an application that will let average people build Web pages without coding in HTML. It can pull photos and video from the other iLife applications, and unlike Apple's HomePage feature of its .Mac (dot-Mac) service, it can re-edit pages after they've been posted.

The other applications, iMovie HD 6, iDVD 6, iPhoto 6, and GarageBand 3 feature what appear to be incremental improvements (such as animated themes in iMovie HD and tools for creating podcasts in GarageBand), but may turn out to be more extensive in actual use.

From an engineering standpoint, they've already jumped one important hurdle: They run natively on both existing Macs and the new Intel-based Macs. I'll be looking more at iLife '06 and the new iWork '06 in upcoming columns once I get the software.

Jeff Carlson and Glenn Fleishman write the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to carlsoncolumn@mac.com. More Practical Mac columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.