Before unveiling the new hardware, Jobs noted that the company's move to Intel Corp. processors in its laptops and desktops in 2006 went smoothly. "It was just a year ago that I announced we were going to switch to Intel processors. I said we'd do it in the coming 12 months. We did it in seven months.

"It's been the smoothest and most successful transition that we have seen in our industry," he said.

Half of all Macs in the U.S. are now being sold to people who are first-time Mac users, said Jobs.

He also stressed that music sales through the company's iTunes Store remain strong. Apple has sold more than 2 billion songs via its iTunes Store to date. And the iPod is the world's most popular music player.

"There was an article recently that said iTunes sales have slowed dramatically. I don't know what data they're looking at," said Jobs. "What we see is iTunes sales were really up this year. We doubled the number of songs we sold in 2006. We are selling over 5 million songs a day. Isn't that unbelievable? 58 songs every second."