Apple 'Back to the Mac' Press Event

— 2 minute read

Earlier today Apple gathered the faithful to chat about new stuff they're going to auto-bill to your credit cards:

  • A redesigned MacBook Air. Starting at $1,049CDN ($999CDN if you know a university student), it's a notebook in between the iPad and a full blown MacBook Pro. This time around, they'll sell a lot of these I think.
  • Updated versions of iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband iLife '11. The new books and letterpress cards in iPhoto '11 will be enough for most people to shell out $49CDN ($79CDN for the family pack).
  • A beta version of FaceTime for the Mac. (which I called ahead of time by the way.) FaceTime is the feature on the iPhone 4 and latest iPod touches that allow you to have a video call with someone on wifi. It even works to FaceTime with yourself, though you'll surely go blind doing that too often.

Thus ends the consumer portion of the event.

They also talked about what's to come for OS X. The next version of Mac OS X is called Lion.

We took our best thinking from Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone. Then we took our best thinking from the iPhone and brought it to iPad. And now we’re bringing it all back to the Mac with our eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system.

Mac OS X Lion, coming out in summer 2011, will incorporate a number of features and enhancements drawn from the iPad/iPhone/iPod touch (iOS) devices. Definitely will be an interesting release that will push the desktop and mobile worlds closer together.