A (New) Chip on His SHoulder

Steve Jobs foiled the rumormongers once more at last week's Macworld Expo. Most observers expected that Apple would announce the first Macintosh computers that partake of powerful and efficient Intel Core Duo microprocessors, the same used by top-notch Windows machines. (Jobs had previously promised to make the shift over his whole computer line by this time next year.) But almost no one thought that the first of these machines would be the most popular Macs that Apple makes--the elegant desktop iMac and the workhorse PowerBook laptop (now renamed the MacBook Pro).

Jobs got huge ovations when he announced that when running native code (written to work directly with the Intel chip), the new iMac runs up to two times faster than its predecessor and the MacBook is up to four times as speedy as a PowerBook. He also did some bragging on Apple's performance during the holiday season, reporting a record-breaking $5.7 billion in revenues and an astounding 14 million iPods sold in the last quarter. After his keynote, he spoke to NEWSWEEK's Steven Levy, between sips of tea. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Will the new machines boost Apple's market share?

Steve Jobs: Our market share has already increased this last year by almost a point [approaching 5 percent], according to the sources. We'd certainly like to keep that trend going and we'll find out. All we have to do is just convince four percent of the Windows customers to buy a Mac and we'll double our market share.

You have two new machines now--a new iMac and a new PowerBook, now called the MacBook. They have the Intel chips in them but they look exactly the same. The form factors [the physical design] are perfect, we don't know how to make them any better. And now we've got Intel processors in them so obviously they run a lot faster.

Was it always your plan to introduce the Intel machines earlier than you promised?