Reminding customers that it doesn't just make shiny, white devices that fit in your pocket, Apple yesterday announced a revamp of the iMac, its flagship home computer.

Click here to see a slide show of the new iMac

Out is the white, plastic casing that characterised iMacs past, and in its place is a thinner, brushed aluminium shell which is reminscient of the MacBook Pro line, and an "even thinner" keyboard.

Accompanying the new machines are overhauled versions of the company's consumer software suites, iLife and iWork, including, among other new features, a spreadsheet program called Numbers designed to lure users from Microsoft's Excel.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said the new iMac was "the most incredible desktop computer we've ever made," an announcement that excited bloggers, though many were quick to zero on the minutiae of the upgrade, such as that the 'open apple' key has been renamed the 'command' key – apparently to avoid confusion.

The new iMacs, which go on sale in the UK today, come in two sizes – with 20 and 24-inch screens – and will cost $1,199 (£590) and $1,799 (£885) respectively.

Among the other features of the upgrade are:

– an update to iPhoto called Event, which organises photo libraries into events, each containing a day's worth of pictures which are represented by a single photo;

– a spreadsheet program, called Numbers, which comes with templates for the most common types of graphs and charts and into which users can drag and drop photos;

– a ten-fold increase in .Mac storage to 10Gb;

– a new .Mac feature called Web Gallery, which enables immediate sharing of photos and movies from iLife with Mac, PC or iPhone owners; and

– the ability to incorporate live web widgets, such as Google Maps, into websites created using iWeb.

Mr Jobs also made a point of emphasising the new machines' environmental qualities, saying they were made out of 'highly recyclable' materials.

In recent months, news of Apple has been dominated by the launch of the iPhone, but computers accounted for $2.5 billion - or 60 per cent of the company's total revenues - in the quarter to June.

According to analysts, the growth in Apple computer shipments outpaced that of PCs in the quarter by nearly three times in the quarter, though the company still controls only 5 per cent of the market as a whole.

Details of other new iMac, iLife and iWork specs, including processor speed and the enhanced wi-fi capability, 802.11n, are available here.

Click here to read bloggers' reactions to the new iMac

Explore Personal Tech

• InGear