Apple's co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs, who shocked the Mac faithful five years ago by announcing a partnership with its once arch rival Microsoft, kicked off the trade show with a two- hour demonstration of a new iMac computer with a larger, 17-inch flat panel display and walked through the newest version of the operating system, known as Mac OS X. Jobs said adoption of the 18- month-old system has been "going well," predicting that 20 percent, or 5 million, of all Mac users will be running OS X by the end of the year.

"That's what might tip my toe in the water back on the Apple side," said Janet Parodi, an Internet marketing manager for a pharmaceutical company, about the new iPods. Parodi said she hasn't used a Mac since the 1980s.

Apple introduced a new $1,999 iMac and cut the price of its previous high-end iMac to $1,799, but [Charles Smulders] said he believes that Apple should have rolled out a new desktop offering below $1,000 because last year's iMacs, which are in that price range, are "a little long in the tooth."