Jobs: Apple still on right track

Interim CEO Steve Jobs said today that the company should post its third profitable quarter in a row next week, and while he wouldn't get more specific about the financial results, he did say that "Wall Street will be pleased."

Talking to the Mac faithful at his Macworld keynote speech in New York Wednesday, Jobs gave some insight as to how he had turned Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) around this past year by focusing on the bottom line, paring down the product lines and re-affirming the company's focus on the consumer market.

"We went back to business school 101 and said 'What do people want?' We said, 'Well, they want consumer products and pro products.' And in each category we need desktop and portable products," Jobs said. "If we have four great products that's all we need. We could put the A-team on each one. We could turn them every nine months. We could work on next generation as we introduce the first one."

The newest of those four products is Apple's new iMac consumer desktop system which is taking center stage at the show. Jobs said today that the systems will feature a 56K-bps modem when they ship later this year. A consumer portable system will be available next year, he said.

On the professional side, Jobs said that the response to the company's G3 desktops and notebooks has been very strong. In fact, the company has already shipped 750,000 PowerMacs.

Notebook demand has also been strong. So strong, in fact, that Apple was having supply issues for the PowerBook G3s. But Jobs said that supply issues should be straightened out in the next few weeks. He also said today that the company will introduce a DVD drive for the notebooks.

Jobs also demonstrated the company's new operating system, code-named Allegro, which is due this fall. He showed off a new search technology for the OS, code-named Sherlock, which allows users to search both their hard drives and the Internet in a highly-specific manner.