It is backing up its words with the new iMac computer and an impressive group of games, applications and new hardware that will be released Aug. 15, the same time the iMac will be available in stores.
Besides the iMac focus, Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs announced details about the features, development and release schedule for the upcoming new Mac operating system, dubbed Mac OS X, plus a lucrative deal with the Walt Disney Co. for a fee-based online service for children, called the Daily Blast, aimed at Mac families.
The Daily Blast will become compatible with all Macintoshes, including iMacs, this month, according to Richard Wolpert, of Disney.
"The beta version of this software is available today for free," Wolpert said.
The Daily Blast, a popular online service for kids previously only available for Microsoft Windows, is a big win for Apple and its customers. Besides the Daily Blast, the Disney deals means Disney software titles such as "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" also will be sold for the Mac.
Making a joke of Apple's previous "death spiral," Jobs explained how Apple took on the question of the company's survival by appointing a new management team and a heavily experienced board of directors.
After Apple's management problem was fixed, the second level - profitability - was addressed, Jobs said.
"And I am pleased to announce that in our quarter just ended on June 30 we'll show our third consecutive profitable quarter," Jobs said.
With profitability up, Apple set out to ensure its success by keeping its employees happy.
"Retention of employees is way up, and we are now hiring a lot of very good people," Jobs said.
Next came sales and marketing, two traditional Apple problems. To begin the fix, Apple cut an exclusive Mac sales deal with CompUSA, launched an aggressive brand and product advertising campaign and invested in an online store that Jobs says is the "gold standard of e-commerce in terms of ease of use and clarity."
With its initial 1 million hits per day, Mac buyers came to that store in droves, and the hit rate now tops 10 million a day, said Jobs, making it the largest in the computer industry.
The meat of the keynote address, however, was a reintroduction of Apple's new consumer computer, the iMac.
The only real change in the iMac that Jobs previously debuted was the announcement of a 56Kbps modem, rather than the slower 33.6Kbps modem that was to have come with the machine.
"Apple may have a lot of problems, but listening to its customers is not one of them," he said.
He also mentioned a slew of new universal serial bus options for the iMac, including the iMation Superdisk that reads and writes 1.44MB floppies and 120MB Superdisks, a 100MB Iomega Zip drive, a 1GB Syquest SparQ drive and printers from Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Canon, digital cameras from Kodak and Connectix, an iMac cradle for the 3Com Palm III PDA, and a USB hub from Trega that lets you connect up to 127 devices to one iMac.
As Jobs sees it, "USB is going to be a big deal for iMac and for all Macs in the future."
What Jobs did not discuss was how soon USB will be rolled into other new Macs, a plan Apple had previously announced.
Answering criticism about the lack of applications for the Mac, Jobs recited a list of updated or new Mac applications, focusing on new games, including the hot new XFiles games, plus LucasArts' Star Wars series, the Paramount Star Trek games, the entire Tomb Raider series and a game called DeerHunter - which Jobs admitted he had not played because he's a vegetarian.
Another large group of "teenage boy games" also will make it to the Mac, as well as educational software such as Sesame Street, three of the popular Barbie titles from Mattel for young girls and other titles from Broderbund, the Learning Company, Edmark, Davidson and others.
"We've got 177 new Mac applications announced in just the last 63 days," Jobs said, "and these applications are targeted at the consumer market."
Jobs also noted that the iMac would ship with a solid bundle of software, including Mac OS 8.1, the Willams Sonoma cooking CD, Quicken 98, the NDK and Nanosaur games, Filemaker Pro and AppleWorks.
Microsoft also was introduced as a major Mac software player ("the No. 2 Mac developer after Apple," Jobs said) with its new 4.01 version of Internet Explorer. According to Ben Waldman, the general manager of Microsoft's Mac software unit, Internet Explorer 4.01 is 30 percent faster than 4.0 and offers new Mac-only features.
Besides trying to silence critics of Apple's product strategy and software availability, Jobs focused on how the development of Mac OS 8 and Mac OS X was faring, saying that by this time next year, two new versions of Mac OS 8 will have been introduced, with a third on the way, while Mac OS X will be nearing its "first customer release."
Jobs concluded the presentation with a discussion of Apple's market share and potential for growth. Focusing again on the consumer market, Jobs said Apple had to get back to its consumer roots.
"We're going to do it with the iMac and with our four strengths: the Apple brand, our loyal installed base, our state-of-the-art design and reliability, and our simplicity," he said.
To underscore the simplicity argument, Jobs showed a video comparing the setup of an iMac to that of a similarly priced Hewlett Packard PC, running Windows 98. A young kid, Johan, got the iMac up and running and was on the Internet in eight minutes, 15 seconds, and even able to "check his stock portfolio." Adam, the young HP assembler, took 27 minutes, 39 seconds to get on the Internet.
The tape, as you'd expect, wowed the mostly Mac customers in the audience.
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