Steve Jobs rocked the world yet again on Wednesday with the unveiling of more new Apple products.
The MacBook Air and iLife have been redesigned, and FaceTime for Mac has been added. Mac OS X Lion was introduced to the world in preparation for its summer 2011 debut.
Four different models of the MacBook Air are available for purchase either from the Apple online store or a local Apple Store.
Unlike the MacBook and MacBook Pro line of Apple laptops, the Air lacks a disk drive and most other connections in exchange for extreme portability and long battery life.
Remember the ad for the first Air, when Steve Jobs brought a manila folder out to the keynote and to everyone’s surprise there was a personal computer inside?
The new Air is even smaller, and comes in 11” and 13” models.
Also new to the Air line and all of Apple’s computers is a flash storage hard drive, meaning nothing is physically spinning in the computer.
This means that when you press the power button on the computer, it will be fully functional in a matter of a few seconds.
Now, when accessing applications and documents the wait time for the item to load will be minimal compared to other computers on the market, even other Apple computers.
Available in an 11” 64 GB model for $99, an 11” 128 GB model for $1199, a 13” 128 GB model for $1,299 and a 13” 256 GB model for $1,599, the MacBook Air offers extreme portability while maintaining the great operating system and daily features that Mac users have come to love.
Jobs also introduced the refreshed versions of the iLife suite which include iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, each improved in its own way.
Available currently for $49, the iLife suite will ramp up the functionality of your Mac computer and allow better integration with Facebook, something that most college students use and love.
For those iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4 generation users out there familiar with FaceTime, a client for the Mac has also been added (available now).
Similar to Skype or iChat, the FaceTime app allows you to call friends with the iPhone or iPod Touch and talk face-to-face, just like most other video chat clients.
Mac OS X Lion has been officially introduced to the world, featuring an app store similar to that of the “i” devices (available in about 90 days), a program called “Launchpad” similar to the different screens on an iPod Touch and a new view called “Mission Control” which shows exactly what is running on your Mac and groups them based on usage.
Steve Jobs says Lion will be available coming in summer 2011, so be expecting a new operating system on your Mac next year.
Get ready to enjoy a whole new Apple experience in the coming months.
Todd Sanborn can be reached at toddalan@me.com.