Jobs to Dell, Gateway: Whatcha Gonna Do With All That Junk, All That Junk, Inside Your Trunk?

Given the recent monomania over Apple’s iPhone, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the company also has a thriving personal-computer business that’s tearing market share from the hands of rival computer-makers.

But while Apple may have taken the “computer” out of its name, it definitely hasn’t taken the computer out of the company. According to market researcher IDC, sales of Apple machines rose to 1.76 million units during its third quarter of the year, up 33% from the same period a year ago.

And they’re sure to rise in the fourth quarter as well, thanks to a batch of new products the company debuted today. At an event at its corporate headquarters, Apple uncrated a sleek new aluminum-and-glass iMac desktop (with all-new Bluetooth 2.0 keyboard) and a faster Mac mini as well as significant upgrades to its iLife (revamped iMovie) and iWork (new spreadsheet program) software suites and .Mac service (10 GB of storage plus new photo-sharing features).

Interestingly, Apple’s selling its new iMacs at prices lower than those of their predecessors, and while those prices are still higher than those of low-end Windows PCs, the company says they compare favorably to more high-quality PCs. “Our goal is to make the best personal computers in the world and make products we are proud to sell and recommend to our family and friends,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at Apple’s event today. “We want to do that at the lowest prices we can. But there’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship. And we just can’t do it. We can’t ship junk. There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. And we think that there’s a very significant slice of the [market] that wants that, too. You’ll find that our products are not premium priced. You price out our competitors’ products, and add features that actually make them useful, and they’re the same or actually more expensive. We don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products.”