Apple introduces the MacBook

With the arrival of the Macword San Francisco conference, Steve Jobs took the stage to deliver another exciting keynote address. I agree with Presentation Zen, Apple and Jobs really do a superb job at presentations.

The Powerbooks are finished. With the use of the new dual Intel processors, Apple's Powerbook line is replaced by the Macbook Pro. These look superb, and are apparently quite fast. I note that no enhancements to battery life are mentioned. Still, I want one.

I'm most excited about the change to the iMac. They took the recent G5 iMac, the slick one built into the monitor sporting built-in camera and mic and wireless and bluetooth with remote control for media control, and put dual Intel processors in it as well, and it keeps the same price. We've been considering a family computer and this just may be it.

The Mac Mini, while not getting "Intel-icized" also recieved a small update--more memory and optional Superdrive and wireless features.

June promises to be even more exciting. Full-size desktops with the new processors are sure to dazzle. One question about hardware, though... what of the iBook line?

On the software side, as usual, I'll not get into any of the media apps and packages. The new versions of Apple and third party apps are encouraged to be released in Universal Binary form, optimized to run both on old PowerPC chip and on Intel processors. But, Word and other apps we use everyday such as Accordance, are reported to run splendidly using the Rosetta emulation that comes standard on the new Intel-chipped Macs.

A final note that Pages, Apple's Word Processor, has been updated to version 2. My question is, does it fix Right-to-Left Unicode Hebrew? I find no mention, so I'm guessing not. Would love to hear a confirmation.