Boy, the rumors were WAY off this year. As usual, the Apple community spent the months leading up to MacWorld 2006 making predictions about what Jobs would announce. As usual, the predictions ranged from the, well, predictable (iLife ’06) to the unlikely (Apple releasing a line of 40 inch plasma TVs with OS X built in – think a TV version of the iMac). Having just purchased a new PowerBook, I spent quite a bit of time over the last couple weeks reading forums and hitting community sites to see what people thought was going to be announced – and whether I should wait to buy my new mac.

There were a lot of theories, but the common opinion seemed to be that there would be a new widescreen iBook announced, which would use the new Intel chip. There was also going to be a new Mac mini, probably with an iPod dock and FrontRow built in to compete with Windows Media Center. With both of those running on the Intel chips, Apple would have a full year of product testing before moving their “pro” users over with a new PowerBook or tower.

But Apple threw everyone for a loop by basically replacing their high-profile product lines with new Intel models. The iMac has all the same features as before, and the same price, but with the dual-processor Intel, it’s about twice as fast. The PowerBook has been renamed the MacBook Pro, and has been heavily upgraded, including FrontRow, a built-in iSight, and the same dual-processor Intel chip, which beefs it up to nearly 4 times as fast.

In his keynote address, Jobs addressed concerns about Rosetta emulation by announcing that all the software the new Macs come with will run natively on the Intel chips, view the new “universal” binaries. Other big products like Quark and Office are nearly ready to release their universal versions, and even Photoshop appeared to run decently (though not at “pro” levels) via Rosetta emulation.

Now, I’m still happy with my purchase, because everyone knows you don’t buy a first-generation Apple product. That’s true in general, but I imagine it’s an even bigger risk with a shift in processor architecture. My PowerBook will serve me fine for several years, and I’m not going to try to upgrade. Still, it should be interesting to watch Apple push the Intel switch faster than expected.

PS – Who thought up the name MacBook? Am I the only one who thinks it’s kind of cheesy?