But that's not all, as Jobs often says. Apple has new iMacs in hues called Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power that took 18 months to formulate, a testament to Jobs's perfectionism. He's also managed to lure back Cheryl Vedoe as vice president of education marketing to counterpunch Dell. Bargain hunters are buying. David Dreman of Dreman Value Management bought 2.8 million shares after the September nosedive.
Jobs still faces tough issues.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Jobs is forever reminding people that superior design makes his machines more powerful at lower megahertz, a measure of how fast a processor can do calculations. Still, Intel and AMD are running away from him. Intel is cheaper too. Some Mac users say Jobs should get OS X running on Intel chips and put the megahertz war behind him. It's at a third to half the speed of the Intel architecture, and the gap has widened.