Jobs lines up fresh Apples

Bumper crop of announcements expected

All eyes will be on Steve Jobs on 10 January, when the Apple chief executive makes his keynote speech at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.

Apple is a rarity in IT in that it usually manages to keep new products under wraps until intended. However, that has not stopped watchers second-guessing his announcements and making the first Intel-based Macintosh systems a hot tip.

Jobs’s June 2005 announcement that Apple would move from Power to Intel processors pegged June 2006 as a latest arrival date for units but experts believe commercial shipments could arrive well before then. Clues include the need for a performance refresh to the iBook and PowerBook notebook families. Supporting that hunch, Intel late last week announced its latest Core Duo generation of mobile PC chips.

The AppleInsider site suggests that iMac and Mac Mini machines will also be released in the first four months of this year.

Also at MacWorld, Apple is rumoured to announce a digital music player to replace the iPod Shuffle.