Tech Olive

Apple pulled the “one more thing” trick yet again at their “Back to the Mac” event. That one more thing was none other than a new MacBook Air. This thing is amazingly thin, 0.68-inches at its thickest to be exact, and it weights just 2.9 lbs. It’s also a Unibody construction (as expected) and comes in either 13.3-inch or 11.6-inch flavors. As for hardware specs, it’s got a Core 2 Duo, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics, the usual multitouch trackpad, a FaceTime camera, 802.11n, and no optical drive or hard drive. That’s right, it’s using flash storage just like the iPad.

As far as battery life, Apple claims it gets 7 hours (5 hours for 11.6-inch model) and 30 hours of standby time.

Prices will start at $999 for the cheapest model, which is an 11.6-incher with a 1.4GHz CPU and 64GB of storage. The 11.6-incher with a 1.4GHz CPU and 128GB of storage will be $1,199, while a 13.3-incher with a 1.86GHz CPU and 128GB of storage will run you $1,299. The most expensive model will cost $1,599 and comes with a 13.3-inch display, a 1.86GHz CPU and 256GB of storage. All models will come with 2GB of RAM, as well as the Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics and they’re available today.

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As expected, Apple has announced the next version of OS X, which will be known as Lion. This is where Apple explains the whole “Back to the Mac” meaning. They’re essentially going to bring many of the features of iOS over to OS X. For starters, there will be a Mac App Store, which will have many of the features that the iOS App Store has such as one-click downloads, auto-installation, and auto-updates. The Mac App Store interface looks pretty much identical to iTunes.

There’s also a new feature called Launchpad, which basically brings up a grid of Mac Apps on your desktop, just like how an iPad would display apps.

OS X will also have something called Mission Control, which brings together any open windows, as well as any open apps and pops them up all at once on the desktop.

OS X Lion is planned to release sometime next Summer, but the Mac App Store will be available for Snow Leopard users within the next 90 days. They’ll begin to accept Mac apps from devs in November.

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With 19 million people using FaceTime, Apple’s mobile video-calling feature, many users expressed great interest for a Mac version. Luckily, Apple announced that today and will release the free beta for it today as well.

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We’re keeping up (trying to) with Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event and the first thing they announced today was a big update to their iLife suite, iLife ’11. iPhoto will include new full screen modes, better Facebook integration, creating “books” (essentially photo albums), the ability to easily email photos, as well as pull in photos from Flickr. The new iPhoto looks a lot like an iPad app, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think it brings together the desktop and mobile experience nicely.

The new iMovie brings better and easier audio editing capabilities (including audio effects), one step effects (let’s you create a macro of a number of effects and apply them all at once), movie trailers (where you can make neat homemade trailers from your own videos using templates), the ability to adjust FPS, and face recognition in videos!

GarageBand will include a new feature called Flex Time, which will allow to more accurately fix timing issues with your music. So instead of just easily becoming a better musician yourself, GarageBand will do all that for you! Makes sense, right? The new piece of software will also include more guitar amps and effects, as well as new guitar and piano lessons. Again, a lot of it looks like an iPad app.

iLife will come free of charge with every new Mac. If you already own a Mac and want iLife, it’s only $49 and available today.

An anonymous tipster recently sent a photo to gadget weblog Engadget that appears to be the new MacBook Air, which is rumored to be announced at the “Back to the Mac” event on October 20th. The photo reveals a couple of new features like a re-designed case, a crap-ton of battery packs, and no room for a hard drive, which can only mean this particular SKU uses some sort of flash-based storage.

Of course, this may not even be the new MacBook Air. We’re big skeptics here at the Olive as far as rumors are concerned. What do you think?

via [Engadget]