by Terho Uimonen

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PARIS (IDG) -- Sticking to its promise of a mid-September release date, Apple Computer has started to ship the iBook, its first portable computer aimed squarely at consumers.

The iBook is now available in the United States as and will reach European shores within the next few weeks, said Steve Jobs, Apple's interim CEO, in his keynote speech here at the opening day of the annual Apple Expo trade show.

"We announced that we would ship the iBook in mid-September, and guess what -- that's today," quipped Jobs, addressing a jubilant crowd of Macintosh devotees.

The iBook, which is powered by a 300MHz PowerPC G3 processor and features a 12.1-inch active matrix screen, will carry a retail price of 1,649 euros ($1,710) once it ships in Europe, said Jobs. Apple has already received more than 160,000 pre-orders for the iBook, although it has yet to start taking orders in Japan, claimed Jobs.

"It's a great product," said Jobs, referring to the iBook as the world's second-fastest portable computer, surpassed only Apple's own PowerBook line of corporate notebooks.

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The company's iMac consumer desktop PC, which was launched on August 15 in 1998, according to Jobs has now sold more than 2 million units in just over a year. He claimed that as many as 33 percent of iMac buyers were first-time computer buyers, thus enlarging Apple's installed base.

Jobs did not, however, take advantage of the Apple Expo event to unveil the long-expected followup to the first-generation iMac.

In addition to the iBook announcement, Jobs also demonstrated the "voiceprint" password function and some 50 other new features, such as Sherlock 2, that will be part of the forthcoming MacOS 9 operating system. Scheduled to ship in October, MacOS 9 will carry a retail price of 110 euros ($114), said Jobs.

Sherlock 2, Apple's Internet search software, has been redesigned to help users buy goods an devices from Net retailers and auction houses, said Jobs. "Sherlock can find the best deals out there for you," he added.

In another software demo, Jobs got a little help from an IBM official, who demonstrated a French-language version of IBM's ViaVoice speech recognition software running on a Mac.

Terho Uimonen is Scandinavia bureau chief for the IDG News Service.