Apple Turns on the Juice With Introduction of G4 : Technology: It says PC outperforms those using Pentium III chip. But Intel and at least one analyst are skeptical.
Apple Computer introduced a new version of its desktop computer Tuesday, crowing that its Power Mac G4 is much faster than many business and personal computers using Intel’s flagship Pentium III microprocessor.
The news helped push Apple shares up $3.19 to close at $65.25 Tuesday on Nasdaq, about double where they traded in March and their highest level since 1993.
Adding fuel to Apple’s nearly two-year resurgence, the 400-megahertz versions of the Power Mac began shipping Tuesday at $1,599 without monitor, and faster versions are scheduled for release in September and October.
“It’s the most powerful personal computer ever brought to market,” said Apple interim Chief Executive Steve Jobs in introducing the Power Mac G4 to an enthusiastic throng at a Seybold Seminars publishing convention in San Francisco.
Apple also said it has received 140,000 orders in just 40 days for its new iBook portable computer aimed at consumers, more than double the shipments of Apple’s higher-priced PowerBook portable for the entire second quarter.
The company posted about $1.9 billion in losses in 1996 and 1997 and seemed close to going out of business. But Jobs, who co-founded Apple, returned to run the company in August 1997. Last year’s introduction of the wildly popular, candy-colored iMac computer helped revive the company.
“A lot of investors have looked at Apple as a company that is no longer going under. They have started to look at it as a value investment, because of its strong balance sheet,” said Richard Schutte, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co. “Now people are going to start looking at this as a growth opportunity.”
Unlike Apple’s iMac, the new desktop Power Mac G4 is aimed mainly at publishing and education professionals. It supplants Apple’s Power Mac G3 released two years ago. John Warnock, chief executive of leading publishing-software developer Adobe Systems, proclaimed the G4 “the fastest machine that runs our applications.”
Apple’s new television commercials will brag that the U.S. government won’t allow the G4 to be exported to some countries because of their ability to process 1 billion operations per second. The chips were designed by Apple, Motorola and IBM.
Apple also introduced a 22-inch LCD flat monitor, the largest available, which will be sold for $3,999 in October to buyers of the 450- and 500-megahertz versions of the G4.
Jobs said that the 500-megahertz G4 routinely completes more than 1 billion high-level mathematical operations per second, more than doubling the performance of the Pentium III by using chip architecture adapted from supercomputers.
But those tests don’t automatically translate into performance for real people using real computers.
Two years ago, Apple claimed that its G3 chips were superior to Intel’s Pentium II chips, but independent tests showed later that the performance was reversed on some applications.
“I’d be suspicious of these claims” by Apple, said chip analyst Martin Reynolds of research firm IDG.
Intel also begged to differ.
“It’s important to look at overall processor performance . . . how the PC is going to be used, and compatible software,” said spokesman Chuck Mulloy. “We think Intel processors deliver the best performance for a wide variety of users.”
At a conference for Intel technology partners in Palm Springs on Tuesday, Chief Executive Craig Barrett said the company’s 700-plus-megahertz version of Pentium III, which hadn’t been expected before November, would be shipped in October.
