Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Apple introduces iLife 11, new Macbook Air, adds FaceTime to Mac

Apple introduced its new iLife 11 software suite Wednesday. It also added FaceBook to Mac Computers and introduced a new superlight line of laptop computers that launch today.

The new iLife 11 is available immediately for $49 for existing customers and will come free for new users.

It updates GarageBand and iPhoto and iMovie with a suite of new features including the ability to create movie-quality trailers with a full orchestra sound.

FaceTime for Mac is also available for download today at apple.com and will allow customers to have video conferencing between Macs or with iPhone 4s and the new iPod touches.

CEO Steve Jobs also gave a preview of the new upcoming operating system, to be called Lion. Lion will use some of the innovations from the OS in iPad and iPhone.

Lion will use Multi-Touch gestures using touch gestures on the mouse or trackpad. Jobs said 7 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store and Lion will include a new Mac App Store.

It will have one-click download with free and paid apps, with 70 percent of revenues going to developers. The apps will auto install and auto update. These apps will be licensed for use on all your personal Mac computers.

The Apps will go into something called "the launchpad" on your doc.

Lion will also have "Misson Control" that will allow users to view everything running on the computer and interact with them instantly.

Jobs said Lion will release in summer 2011. The Mac App Store will launch for Snow Leopard users in 90 days.

-- Jobs also introduced the new Macbook Air, which he said he believes is the future of notebooks. At its thickest point, it's 0.68 inches and is 0.11 inches at its thinnest point. It weighs 2.9 pounds and has complete aluminum unibody construction with a full keyboard and track pad.

It's got a 13.3 inch LED backlit display (1440 x 900 pixels, more than on 15-inch MacBook pro). It's got a Core 2 Duo Processor. It has no optical drive and no hard drive.

Apple has gone to flash storage, similar to what is used in iPad. It allows for instant-on, starting two times faster than hard drives. It's 90 percent smaller and lighter than standard hard drives.

Battery life is 30 days on MacBook Air and 7 hours of real world wireless web use. Jobs thinks this is twice the life of the MacBook Pro.

A 11.6 display version is also available and will weigh just over two pounds. It gives five hours of heavy wireless web use.

Pricing is $999 for the 11.6 model with 64 GB of flash memory. To move to 128 GB it's $1,199.

The 13-inch model starts at $1,299 for 128 GB storage. To go to 256 GB, it's $1,599.

All models include 2 GB of memory.

4 comments:

Home Phone Service said...

I'm sure it varies by industry. Every place I've ever worked was primarily mac-based, but I do a lot of work in graphic design and digital media.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what geek came up with the name Lion

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