Intel Core Duo Gets Bite from Apple

Online staff -- Electronic News, 1/11/2006

Apple Computer Inc. has moved ahead with plans to use Intel processors six months ahead of previous company estimates.

The company announced at the MacWorld Expo Tuesday that its latest iMac will run on the new Intel Core Duo processor.

The chip made a splash at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, when Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini formally announced the dual-core processor during his keynote. The chip is expected to give Intel a hand up in the consumer electronics world, as it targets speed and device compatibility, backed up by several industry players.

The iMac with dual-core processors is a CE aimed machine, promoting video, media and digital lifestyle applications, such as iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD and iWeb, a new application that simplifies the creation of personal Web sites. Using the Intel chip, said Apple, allows this next generation computer to deliver performance that is up to twice that of its predecessor.

“The iMac has already been praised as ‘the gold standard of desktop PCs’, so we hope customers really love the new iMac, which is up to twice as fast,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, at the show’s opening keynote in San Francisco yesterday. “With Mac OS X plus Intel’s latest dual-core processor under the hood, the new iMac delivers performance that will knock our customers’ socks off.”

The Core Duo is the first Intel processor to be used in a Mac computer. Apple announced last June that by June 2006 it would introduce a computer with Intel chips. The statement marked a move away from IBM-based technology for Apple, which further said at the time that all of its Macs would use Intel processors by the end of 2007.

The new iMac starts at $1,299 and is shipping today.