Arrival of iMac put both buzz and colour back into Apple operations

The resurgence of Apple Computers was the most surprising business story of 1998, declared Businessweek magazine. Quarterly profits doubled, thanks to the iMac, said the magazine.

Indeed, 630,000 of the Apple iMacs were sold between August and year's end, boosting Apple's market share to 5.3 per cent, up from 4 per cent in 1997. Those are solid and startling numbers. And CEO Mr Steven Jobs, recognising that the iMac has been the product that is leading the company back from the brink, introduced a new line of iMacs in January, in six different colours.

Consumer response has been ecstatic. Retail stores in the US are prominently displaying the iMacs in their windows, drawing computer neophytes into the stores. Nearly half the people who buy iMacs have never used a computer before. The iMac sales have also created renewed consumer interest in other Apple products and that elusive notion called buzz; people are talking about Apple. They are curious about the products. When they go into computer stores, they gravitate to the most attractive and colourful area, the iMac displays.

A side benefit of that renewed interest has been the increasing awareness that Apple computers have solved the Y2K problem, unlike many others. On Sunday, Apple debuted its television ad featuring HAL, the computer from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey. In the ad, which ran during the Superbowl, an American football event that draw 100 million viewers, HAL explains that Y2K was a bug for the millennium. "It was a bug, Dave. Only Mackintosh was designed to function perfectly," intones HAL.

With the stunning return of Apple, the question of course turns to why the company is laying off workers in Cork, one of three Apple plants worldwide.

"We have a process that looks internally at efficiency", said Apple spokeswoman Ms Rhona Hamilton, who would not comment for the record on the prospects for plants in Sacramento or Singapore where the iMac is also produced.