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The 'second-generation' Power Macs are housed in a sleek pearly silver enclosure and come in three configurations. The entry-level machine has a G4 clocked at 733MHz, which was previously Apple's high-end machine which cost £2499. The Quicksilver will ship for £1199 and includes 128Mb RAM, a 40Gb hard drive, a GeForce2 graphics card and a CD-RW drive as standard.

The mid-range model which Jobs said included the fastest chip Apple has ever shipped has a 867MHz G4, a larger

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hard disk (60Gb), 128Mb of memory and for the first time a 2Mb Level 3 cache which makes 'this thing screams,' claimed Jobs. Most interestingly, the company has brought the popular SuperDrive down to the mid range. Previously the SuperDrive, which allows users to read and write CDs and DVSs, was only available at the top-end model but availability problems have obviously been resolved.

The 867MHz retails for £1799, and Jobs made a cost comparison saying that previously to get a SuperDrive Mac users would have had to pay £2499.

To introduce the high-end Power Mac Jobs said that due to customer demand Apple had returned to the mainstream multiprocessing market with a dual-processor 800MHz G4 machine. Mac OS X has been optimised for multiple processors and this machine, according to Jobs, was 'to die for if you are running OS X.' Apple has increased the RAM to 256Mb and included a massive 80Gb hard drive. There is also a GeForce2 video card with support for dual displays. This high-end Mac will ship next month for £2499, the other two are available now.