Steve Jobs on Year of the Notebook: New PowerBooks and Wireless Input

In January of this year, we said this year was going to be the year of the notebook for Apple. And it certainly has been so far. Last quarter, as you know, the industry average for notebooks is about 24-25%. Right? About 24-25% of all the computers shipped in the personal computer industry are notebooks. Last quarter, Apple's number was 42%. Of all the computers we shipped were notebooks. We are substantially ahead of the industry in the transition to portables.

We started in January when we announced two amazing notebooks. The 17-inch PowerBook, the first 17-inch notebook ever, and the 12-inch PowerBook, the most compact full-featured notebook ever. So let's take a look at these two. First, the 17-inch. It is amazing. It's only one inch thick. That's 26 millimeters. And you could say, well, that's probably pretty easy, right? No. It's very, very difficult engineering. Since then, there have been two other 17-inch notebooks introduced quite recently, one from Toshiba and another from Hewlett-Packard. Are they the same thing? No. This is the Toshiba 17-inch. It is 1.8 inches thick, or 45 millimeters.

That's 80% thicker. Let's put them side by side, and here's what you see. This is amazing to me. Let's open the lid of the Toshiba. The entire PowerBook is much thinner than just the bottom of the Toshiba. So it's stunningly different. The weights are also stunningly different. The Toshiba weighs dramatically more. The Hewlett-Packard one is even thicker than the Toshiba one. So the 17-inch PowerBook. We also brought out an amazing feature with this product, which is, of course, the backlighted keyboard with ambient light sensors to detect when the light levels go down and automatically bring the backlight up on the keyboard. An amazing feature. So for today, we have a new 17-inch PowerBook, even faster. 1.33 gigahertz G4, and we've doubled the size of the onboard L2 cache to 512K. This thing is really going to be a fast machine. We've also doubled the amount of memory you can have to 2 gigabytes.

And it is now double data rate memory, so it's even faster. We have put in the hot new graphics chip, the Radeon Mobility 9600. And in addition to its FireWire 800 and 400 ports, we are adding USB 2, dual USB 2 ports. We are also doubling the speed of the Super Drive to a 2X slot load Super Drive. All of this in the new 17-inch PowerBook, and at the same time, we are bringing down the price to, in the U.S., $29.99, and in Euros, And the new 17-inch PowerBook, they are available today. So, now let's take a look at the 12-inch PowerBook. The 12-inch PowerBook is the smallest Apple notebook ever, and it is an amazingly nice machine. We have a new version of it today as well. It now is going to run at 1 gigahertz, got a 1 gigahertz G4, again, with the cache size at 512K L2 cache. We have increased the maximum memory to 1.25 gigabytes in this machine, and we've put the new NVIDIA GeForce

FX Go 5200 in it, a really good graphics chip for this class of machine. We've also got USB 2 ports in this machine, and in response to the number one customer request, we have added a DVI connector on this machine as well. So, with this DVI connector now, you can drive all of Apple's cinema displays and anything else that accepts DVI, and the machine will give you a dual display, it will give you video mirroring, and it has lid-closed operation as well. There are two models of the new 12-inch PowerBook, one with a combo drive and one with a super drive, the combo drive model, 1599 and 1799, and again, same price in euros.

So that is the new 12-inch PowerBook, and they are available also today. Now, that's the 12 and the 17. What about the 15-inch? Well, we've got the amazing Titanium PowerBook. The Titanium PowerBook was a landmark product when it was introduced in January of 2001, almost three years ago, and it was way ahead of any other notebook, and you know what? No one has yet caught up with it. None of our competitors have caught up with this product, which we introduced almost three years ago, and until we introduced the new PowerBooks this last January, this had set the standard for all notebooks in the industry. It was the first widescreen notebook, as an example. So, we've got the 12-inch and the 17-inch PowerBooks. Today, we are announcing the new 15-inch PowerBook. It is a great machine, 15.2-inch display, and it is also really thin, 1.1 inches, 5.6 pounds, or 28 millimeters and two-and-a-half kilograms. It's a beautiful machine. We have also brought the backlighted keyboard to the 15-inch. It's one of the most requested features we had, and it is a very

fast machine. 1.25 gigahertz G4, again, with a 512K cache, up to 2 gigabytes of 333 megahertz DDR memory. Radeon Mobility 9600, just like the 17-inch, and that's with 64 megabytes of its own DDR memory, right with the graphics subsystem. A 2X SuperDrive, again, a DVI connector that not only has DVI, but VGA, S-video, and composite, where again, we can have dual displays, video mirroring, and of course, lid-closed operation to drive any of our cinema displays. Of course, FireWire 800 and 400, USB 2.0 ports, dual USB 2.0 ports, and a full complement of connectivity, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, and a 56K modem, all inside this amazing package.

Hey, one more. Yeah. Well, you can get one very soon. So, we've got two models, one with a gigahertz processor, 256 megabytes of memory, a 60-gig hard drive, a slot-load combo drive, but the lighted keyboard and the AirPort Extreme are optional. You can order them on the website, but they're optional, at $19.99. And the second model, one and a quarter gigahertz, 512 megabytes, 80 gigabyte drive, 2X SuperDrive, and the lighted keyboard and AirPort Extreme are built in for $25.99. And so, we've got these two price points, $19.99 and $25.99, or $19.99 and $24.99. So, the new 15-inch PowerBooks are available starting today. So, this is an incredible lineup. We've got the 12-inch PowerBook, we've got the new 15-inch PowerBook, we've got the new 17-inch PowerBook. This is clearly the year of the notebook for Apple and its customers. We're offering them in any size you want.

12-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch, and you've got to check out the new 15-inch. It is truly the perfect balance of portability and power. And so with this lineup, we think that we can take this 42% portables and over time get it to where portables equal desktops. And I think we can see that in the not terribly distant future happening with a lineup like this. The best, strongest lineup of notebooks we've ever had in Apple's history. This is clearly the year of the notebook.

So I got one more thing. This is a set of products that has been requested of us for some time. We wanted to take a little extra time and get it right. And I hope we have. And so today we're introducing a mouse. Now, what's special about this mouse? Well, it's wireless. And we've got a wireless keyboard to go with it. And this new wireless mouse and keyboard are based on Bluetooth. We decided not to use a schlocky or proprietary wireless standard, but to go with an industry standard that offers us a lot of benefits.

First of all, no cables, that's obvious. But some things that are not so obvious, a 10 meter range, much longer range than most people have done with these products before. We have adaptive frequency hopping. And what that means is we are highly resistant to interference from other wireless products, such as other wireless keyboards and mice, cell phones, microwave ovens, airport wireless networks, you name it. Adaptive frequency hopping gives you really good resistance to interference. And you have security. We have 128 bit encryption. So what you're typing stays with you. And because of all of these features, it's great for classrooms or offices full of these things.

They're not going to interfere with each other. Things are going to stay secure. And yet you have a nice long range. So this is the mouse. That's what it looks like. The batteries are inside. On the bottom, we actually have a switch that you can flip up and will cover the optics and turn the mouse off. So that when you carry this with you, you don't arrive at your destination to find out your battery is dead because something was pushing on the mouse the whole time it was in your bag. It is the perfect product to go with the new PowerBooks. You can just throw it in your bag and without any cables, have a mouse wherever you go. Two AA batteries are included in the product. And they give you a three-month battery life with normal use. Standard AA batteries. This is the keyboard.

Full-size keyboard. It's our standard keyboard. And again, four AA batteries are included. And it gives you a nine-month battery life. And again, the software will warn you when the batteries get low. It's very, very user-friendly. And these products work with macOS 10.2.6 or later. All built into Panther. And they work great with Jaguar 10.2.6 or later. And they work great with our new Notebooks because they all have Bluetooth built in. So again, you throw one of these new mice in your bags and take it with you wherever you go. So the wireless mouse, the wireless keyboard, gonna sell for $69 each. That's 79 euros with VAT included.

We tried to price them aggressively. And they are available in two weeks from now. They'll be on the shelves. So we hope you check them out. We think they're gonna be really nice products.