New Apple MacBook Air, Mac App Store, OS X Lion and iLife 11 announced
Apple head-honcho Steve Jobs took to the stage once again last night to reveal a whole host of new products heading out and into stores worldwide. Whilst the new MacBook Air model was expected, Jobs also dropped in a few surprises. Read on to find out what they were.
MacBook Air
Leaked before the event, we knew this one was coming. Two new models in 11.6 and 13.3 inch sizes were launched, getting rid of hard and optical drives in favour of SSDs ranging from 64 to 256GB.
LED-backlit screens feature on both, powered by Core 2 Duo processors, Nvidia GeForce 320m GPUs and 2GB of RAM.
Full keyboards, glass trackpads, stereo speakers and a camera for the newly announced FaceTime for Mac feature across both. They are available to buy now.
Mac App Store
Macs are about to get their own App Store to go along with the one already available on iPods and iPhones. Launching in 90 days time, it’ll be available to all Snow Leopard users, and will include a similar interface and functionality to its mobile counterparts. The 70/30 Apple/developer split on takings remains the same.
iLife 11
After a two year wait, Apple have updated their iLife suite of lifestyle programs. It’ll cost a reasonable £30, and brings the following improvements among others to iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband:
-iPhoto: Send images to email straight from application, location aware slideshows, full screen mode.
-iMovie: Instant replay mode, trailer feature, improved sound editing.
-Garageband: Groove matching feature, new music lessons.
Mac OS X Lion
2011 will see the release of a brand new Apple desktop OS X, codenamed Lion. With a greater emphasis on touch, it’ll attempt to bridge the gap between OS X and iOS X, making greater use of the Magic Trackpad.
