As for the glossy screens, which are standard in the MacBooks and now a no-cost option on Apple's MacBook Pro line, Schiller said, "We feel the positives now outweigh the negatives for the vast majority of customers. You get richer colors, you get higher contrast ratios, you get blacker blacks. The downside has been the reflection of ambient light -- you had to adjust the screen to deal with that. So you have to push more light [by making the screen backlight brighter]. It's 79% brighter than the iBook it replaces.

"One other difference is you'll get some color shifting, but with the latest generation of the glossy [screen] technology, that is reduced, so that's why we felt comfortable" changing the screen configuration, Schiller said.

Asked why the new screens are an option on MacBook Pros rather than part of the standard configuration, Schiller said some graphics professionals prefer the company's antireflective screens. "We didn't want to just change it, because so many professional graphics designers and photographers are used to the antiglare screen," he said. "But many customers aren't graphics professionals and would like the glossy look."

In addition to releasing MacBooks, Apple dropped its aging 12-in. PowerBook G4, upped the standard processor speeds on its 15-in. MacBook Pro models and effectively reduced the price of the top-end 15-in. configuration by $300.

Until Tuesday, buyers could order the 15-in. MacBook Pro with the fastest Intel processor Apple offers in its laptops, the Intel Core Duo 2.16-GHz chip. But that option added $300 to the cost of the midrange MacBook Pro, pricing it the same as the recently released 17-in. MacBook Pro. In fact, ordering that 15-in. version with a faster 7,200-rpm hard drive made the smaller model $100 more expensive than the larger, ostensibly top-end MacBook Pro.