Jobs debuts new G4 Cube, iMacs in Tokyo

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Power Mac G4 Cube

by Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered a keynote speech to the MacWorld Tokyo exhibition Thursday that managed to live up both to the expectations of Japan's loyal Mac users and to the rumors that had been circulating online in the last week among the worldwide Mac community.

Headlining his presentation, which ran for almost 2 hours, was a range of upgrades to the company's G4 Cube and iMac desktop PCs.

The new Power Mac G4 Cube, which is the first new model in the range announced since the machine debuted at MacWorld in New York in July 2000, has 128M bytes of memory, a 20G-byte hard disk and rewritable CD (CD-RW) drive and goes on sale from today priced at $1,599. With the arrival of the new machine, the current Cube is cut in price from $1,499 to $1,299, Jobs said.

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In addition to the new Cube, Jobs unveiled three new versions of the iMac computer which are also available immediately. Available in Power PC G3 400 MHz, 500 MHz and 600 MHz processor versions, the former two machines have 64M bytes of main memory while the high-end model has 128M bytes of memory. CD-RW drives are present on the latter two machines and prices for the computers are $899, $1,199 and $1,499 respectively.

The company also unveiled two new case colors available on the two higher-end models -- Flower Power and Blue Dalmation -- which feature colored patterns within the case mold.

Also of great interest to the Tokyo audience was the lowering in price of Apple's 22-inch (55-centimeter) LCD monitor. Jobs said Apple is lowering the Japanese price from 428,000 yen ($3,670) to 348,000 yen and the U.S. price from $3,999 to $2,999. The company's 15-inch (37.5-centimeter) monitors retain their existing prices. LCD monitors are popular among Japanese computer users and the new price announced today is likely to increase their popularity among Apple users.

The company also gave over some time to nVidia to give the company's new GeForce 3 graphics processor its first public showing. Apple will begin offering the GeForce 3 chip as an option on its top-of-the range 733 MHz PowerMac G4 machine from late March. It will add an extra $600 to the price of the machine, Jobs said.

Job's keynote comes just over a month before the company's new MacOS X goes on sale worldwide. Scheduled to hit store shelves on March 24, the operating system will retail for 14,800 yen in Japan, said Jobs as he previewed the software which he characterized as "pretty good." Applications written for the new operating system are expected to begin arriving in stores from the second quarter with the majority becoming available in the middle of 2001.

Macworld Tokyo continues until Saturday at Makuhari Messe just outside of Tokyo.

Tests of new G4s find graphic differences
February 8, 2001
Review: The power of the Power Macs
January 31, 2001
Apple pushes FireWire at music show
January 24, 2001
NVidia GeForces its way into Mac
January 12, 2001
Inside the G4 desktops
January 12, 2001
Cross-platform products help Windows, Mac cohabit
January 10, 2001
Macworld Tokyo: Jobs shows bucket-load of new hardware
February 17, 2000

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MacWorld Tokyo
Apple Computers

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