Apple Completes Switch to Intel Chips

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs laughs at his keynote at Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006. Jobs talked about "Leopard," the next major update to the Mac OS. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) (Paul Sakuma - AP)

Many analysts expect the entire lineup of Macs, which use the same chips as its Windows-based PC rivals, will boost Apple's overall computer market share in the United States. For years, it has been less than 5 percent.

While Apple's best-selling iPods have fattened the company's fortunes, Macs remain a core product, generating about half of its revenue. Apple said it sold a record 1.3 million Macs last quarter.

Analysts said Monday doubts surrounding Microsoft's ability to release Vista by its latest target date of January could further help Apple as the Mac maker is expected to ramp up its marketing campaign for the holidays. Its current ads already attack Windows as riddled with security problems while lacking Apple's easy-to-use multimedia applications.

Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner Inc. said there's "a distinct possibility" that Leopard now will even come out ahead of Vista.

"Apple is firing on all cylinders and they are executing on everything they say they will do, which is in stark contrast to its Redmond rival," Baker said.

Added Gartner analyst Mike McGuire: "Apple has built in a future demand for its product and they can also say, 'By the way, we have all this functionality now that you can't get with Windows."

The look-and-feel of Vista and some of its features are indeed similar to ones that already exist in the latest version of Mac OS X, also known as Tiger, which was released a year ago and upgraded in January to work on Intel-based machines.

Apple made it clear Monday it aims to stay ahead of the innovation curve with Leopard.

Some of the new features discussed include:

_"Boot Camp," a program released as a test version in April that lets owners of Intel-based Macs also run the Windows XP operating system. With a separate purchase of Windows, Mac users could then switch between the two operating systems _ though using only one at a time _ by rebooting the computer.

_"Time Machine," which automatically backs up all of a user's files at any point in time to an external hard drive. Users could easily search for and restore deleted or lost copies, say, of photos or documents.

_"Spaces," a new way to simultaneously display and switch between groups of applications under separate tasks.

Jobs told his enthusiastic audience Monday that many other features are planned but will remain "top secret" for now.

"We don't want (Microsoft) to start their photocopiers," he said.

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