You’ll remember (I hope) that the first week of January the Consumer Electronics Show opened in Las Vegas with a keynote presentation by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Mr. Gates and his henchman demonstrated many features of the next version of Windows, named “Vista”. Microsoft plans to ship Vista sometime in late 2006 - two years later than originally scheduled.

This last Tuesday Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage in San Francisco to deliver the keynote address at the MacWorld Expo. While Mr. Jobs didn’t fulfill the “pie in the sky” wishes of every analyst and soothsayer, he did debut products six months earlier than originally scheduled. We’ll get to that later. Here’s everything Mr. Jobs covered in 100 minutes on stage, condensed into around 450 words.

Jobs always begins with a “State of the Apple” summary. There were 26 million visitors to Apple Retail Stores in the holiday shopping quarter – that’s more than the population (legal and illegal) of any single state except California. Apple’s retail stores contributed over $1 billion of the company’s $5.7 billion in revenue for the holiday quarter. Now if we could just get a store in the Maine Mall. Forget that – what about the Tontine Mall?

Over 850 million songs sold to date via the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), now selling 3 million per day. iTMS holds 83% market share of online music sales. 42 million iPods sold so far, 14 million in the last quarter alone. If you do the math (as I know you will), that’s over 100 iPods sold every minute of every hour of every day of the quarter.

Longing for an iPod with an FM radio tuner? Apple now makes a $49 remote control/FM tuner accessory for nano-and-bigger iPods.

Now to the three big announcements. First, Apple’s iLife suite of “digital lifestyle” applications (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, and iTunes) got a major makeover for 2006, as well as a new suitemate. It’s called “iWeb”, and it brings Apple’s ease-of-use and style to creating web sites. iLife ’06 is available right now as a $79 upgrade from earlier versions, and is included free on all new Macs. I will do an in-depth review of iLife ‘06 in this space as soon as I can get my grubby little paws on it.

Announcements two and three. Last spring Apple announced their intention to transition their entire computer product line to run on intel processors, with the first intel-based Macs to be available in the summer of 2006. Conventional wisdom was that the Mac mini and iBook would be the first Macs do get “intel inside”. But, Apple isn’t a conventional company.

Instead, Jobs announced a new iMac, and a laptop-formerly-known-as-15-inch-PowerBook, now called the “MacBook Pro”. Both use intel Core Duo technology – two processors built into a single chip, which provide high levels of performance while consuming less power. Apple claims that the new iMacs are 2 to 3 times faster than the previous G5-powered models. The new MacBooks are purported to be 4 times faster than the PowerBook G4. Both gain more powerful graphics processors as well.

No big changes in shapes and sizes for either Mac. However, the MacBook gets an integrated iSight web camera, a 67% brighter, higher resolution display, and a remote to control Apple’s Front Row media viewing software.

Both will be available in February. No change in price for the iMacs - $1299 for the 17-inch model, $1699 for the 20-incher. MacBook Pros start at $1999, with the high-end model at $2499. No word on when or whether a 17-inch MacBook will appear.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski