Apple’s Back to the Mac Event: Announcement Roundup

Apple held its “Back to the Mac” event and streamed it across the Internet for all to see. The big announcements were a new iLife suite, FaceTime coming to OS X, a new version of OS X dubbed “Lion,” a new MacBook Air, and the Mac App Store. Head past the jump for details and screenshots.

iLife ’11: Comes free with every new Mac, or existing users can upgrade for $49. Available today.

iPhoto ’11

• Adds enhancements to email and Facebook connectivity,
• Adds a new automatic slideshow creation feature, complete with themes and music
• Adds a new letterpress card creator
• Adds fullscreen mode

iMovie ’11

• Significant improvements to audio editing
• Adds a new extremely simple movie trailer creator, complete with epic music and trailer themes (such as adventure movie)
• Has direct sharing to Facebook, Vimeo

GarageBand ’11

• Flex Time and Groove Matching help easily fix instrument and track rhythm
• More guitar amps and effects
• New piano and guitar lessons, can hook up an instrument and GarageBand will coach you

FaceTime: Beta release for Mac FaceTime available today.

• Allows Macs to FaceTime with iPhone 4 and iPod

OS X Lion

• Adds more multi-touch gestures to better organize and access different programs
• Exposé now makes an app cluster if a single application has multiple opened windows
• Adds Mac App Store and Launchpad (a homescreen for apps)

Mac App Store: Opens within 90 days, even on Snow Leopard

• Steve Jobs said it’ll be the “Best place to discover apps,” over iPhones and iPads
• Will have both free and paid apps
• 70% of app revenue goes to app developers
• Apps can go fullscreen and users can swipe back and forth on the trackpad to go between a fullscreen app and other things
• Apps also autosave and resume on launch
• Apple will start accepting app submissions in November

Launchpad: A way to organize apps similar to iOS

New MacBook Air: Available starting today

• 13.3 inch and 11.6 inch models
• .68 inches at thickest point, .11 inches at thinnest

• LED backlit display
• 13.3 inch: 2.9 pounds, 1440×900 pixel screen, Core 2 Duo Processor, nVIDIA GeForce 320m, FaceTime Camera, 7 hours wireless web battery life, 30 day standby battery life

• 11.6 inch: 2.3 pounds, 1366×768 pixel screen, 5 hours wireless web battery life, 30 day standby battery life, otherwise same specs as 13.3 inch model

• No optical drive, no harddrive
• Moves to solid state flash memory
• Price starts at $999, other price and model configurations shown in picture below:

Well, there you have it. If you’re curious, the “Oh and one more thing…” was the MacBook Air refresh. Not too surprising, sadly.

(via Apple’s streaming event)

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