Steve Jobs & company held a special “Back to the Mac” event at the company’s campus in Cupertino, CA on Wednesday, where they took the spotlight away from the iPhone and the iPad… well, at least for a few minutes.
Among the items unveiled at the event were two new revisions of Apple’s ultrathin MacBook Air notebooks, OS X 10.7 Lion with a new app store just for macs, and more. Let’s take a closer look:
MacBook Air
The ultrathin MacBook Air has been completely redesigned and is available in either 11.6 or 13.3-inch sizes, with 1366x768 and 1440x900 screen resolutions respectively.
Perhaps the most impressive new feature is the 64GB or 128GB flash storage cards that reduce boot times to almost nothing (“Instant On”) and allow the notebook to stay powered in standby mode for up to 30 days. With active use, the battery can power the unit for up to 7 hours.
Other notable features include a full-size keyboard and multitouch trackpad, a FaceTime camera, and stereo speakers. Apple is getting a bit of flack however, for sticking with the Core 2 Duo processors rather than including a newer chipset.
The 2.3 lb 11” model starts at $999, while the 2.9 lb 13” model starts at $1299. Both are available now.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
The latest version of OS X includes an App store just for Macs. The applications install automatically, just as they do on the iPad, so there is no downloading or manual installation process. While this may be easier for users, it also means that Apple will have much more control over the content customers will be able to install on their computers.
Launchpad, the same one that is present on the iPad, is another feature that makes Lion seem more like iOS. Once applications are launched, Mission Control lets users easily manage widgets, multiple-windows applications and full screen apps all at once. Also, all apps will now have full-screen mode available.
Facetime for Mac
Mac users can now download Facetime Beta, a video phone application that is quite similar to its cousin iChat. It allows video calls to users with an iPhone 4, a new iPod Touch, or another Mac.
iLife ‘11
Apple has upgraded their iLife multimedia suite which includes iPhoto ’11, iMovie ’11, GarageBand ’11, iWeb, and iDVD. It is available now for $49, or only $6.99 with the purchase of a new Mac.
