Apple unveiled the third generation of its iMac range of computers this week, showing off machines housed in all-in-one cases that incorporate the processors, disk drives and screen in a box that is only about 5cm thick.
The range was unveiled by Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of worldwide product marketing, at the start of the five-day Apple expo in Paris.
He was deputising for Apple’s CE Steve Jobs, who is recovering from surgery to treat cancer.
Schiller hailed the new iMacs — brilliant white and supported by a curved aluminium arm — as ”the world’s thinnest desktop computers”.
They come in three configurations and two sizes: two models have 43cm screens and there is also a top-end model with a 51cm display.
Reflecting continuing pressure on pricing in the PC market, the faster, redesigned machines are still cheaper than their predecessors.
Despite Jobs’s absence, Schiller and the slimline iMac received a rapturous welcome from an audience of 4 000 Apple fans in the Palais des Congres.
”It’s time for a completely new iMac,” Schiller told the crowd.
As well as bypassing the traditional tower or base unit of most desktop computers, the machines are designed to do away with wires, incorporating Bluetooth wireless technology to eliminate keyboard and mouse wires, and WiFi technology to connect to the Internet without a lead.
”I think a lot of people will be asking ‘where has the computer gone?”’ Schiller said.
The new iMacs are the latest in a line from Apple that has sold 7,5-million computers since the launch of the first ”bondi blue” iMac in 1998.
That launch helped save Apple at a time when years of management blunders and fierce competition from Microsoft saw its market share slump to single digits.
Sales of the second generation iMac — introduced in 2002 with a dome-shaped base and a chrome arm supporting the thin display — had slowed in recent quarters, and Apple’s share price was hit in July this year when it was forced to admit stocks of that model were being run down ahead of the new machine’s launch.
Despite that, Apple shares have risen from about $20 at the end of last year to nearer $35 this week aided by strong sales of the company’s pioneering iPod music player, which now holds 58% of the music player market. — Â