Apple Announces iLife '11, FaceTime Mac, Lion, Mac App Store, MacBook Air 827
Apple once again streamed their latest keynote where they unveiled iLife '11 (more fullscreen and Facebook in iPhoto, Audio editing and automatic trailers in iMovie, Rhythm correction and lessons in Garage Band). FaceTime for the Mac will connect video chat to phones with a Beta starting today. Next we get a preview of OS X Lion which will have an App Store and new UI bits shipping this summer. The Mac App Store will launch on Snow Leopard in 90 days. The New MacBook Air is under 3lbs, 13.3" screen, Core 2 Duo, solid state only storage. There's also an 11.6" version starting at $999 with 64gb of storage shipping today.
Re:Not very exciting (Score:5, Informative)
They are *not* locking down OSX. You will still be able to get apps anywhere you want.
Re:Not very exciting (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's worse than lame as they're now locking down Mac OSX just like they do with iOS.
You mean except for the fact that it was explicitly stated that the app store wasn't the exclusive place to get apps for Mac OS X? How can it be locked down when nothing has changed beyond having a new source for downloading apps from?
Re:Will the app store have the same lock down? (Score:5, Informative)
The $99/year is for developers, not consumers.
Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:2, Informative)
I know a few dozen Mac owners, and of them, only one's not dual booting Windows -- and trust me, that guy's not technical enough to figure out even a simple App Store.
But my sample may be skewed because most of the people I know with Macs are trying to get work done with them.
Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:5, Informative)
You're just trolling.
Our Macs do a more than satisfactory job at analyzing large amounts of scientific data. For the mundane stuff, most in our office use Office 2008 for the word processing and spreadsheet and Keynote for presentations. Most are looking to upgrade to Office 2010 to regain some macros in Excel.
We don't do any mechanical work, but I've heard that that a new version of Autocad for OS X was just recently announced, and if needed we can run Pro/E within Linux.
Incidentally I use VmWare Fusion to work on some of our server code before I release it to our public hosts. Our OS X desktops work well with our Linux rack mount servers. Though our Mac Pro really crunches the numbers quickly.
Maybe you just need to hang around different people... ;)
Re:Anyone else noticing the CPU situation? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:1, Informative)
Exactly. OSX, at least in the form that we know it, is dying. The writing is there on the wall. In the end, it will become a dumb vessel for iApps just like the iPad and the iPhone is. Time to jump ship.
Re:RTFA? (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, watch the streaming video [edgesuite.net]. :P
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
OS X is still UNIX.
So is iOS.
(But FWIW I don't see the App store becoming the only way to get software onto your Mac).
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
And have they EVER made a statement to that effect about Mac OS X that would lead you to believe they would prevent you from installing software any other way?
They were pretty up-front about it with the iPhone - if you want to distribute to the iPhone, this is the only way to do it.
In today's announcement, it was simply "a way to distribute apps" - not "the only" way to distribute apps. Frankly, I'm not sure why people seem to think that the Mac OS X and iOS platforms will necessarily, or ever, converge to that point. They've stated that they don't intend to lock down Mac OS X that way, and they've made no comments that would contradict that today.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
iOS is "unix". OS X is UNIX [opengroup.org].
Re:Anyone else noticing the CPU situation? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, they couldn't find a spot for a commodity 1.8" ssd (~ $550 for 256 GB on newegg)?
Not and keep it the thickness and weight it is with the battery life it has. By not going with an ssd enclosure they save a significant amount of space which allows for more than half of the total volume to be integrated batteries.
Re:Anyone else noticing the CPU situation? (Score:3, Informative)
With CPU speeds like these, it almost seems like they just didn't want to say the word 'Atom'.
The fastest available Intel Atom is the D525 [intel.com] which is dual core. It gets 709 on PassMark [cpubenchmark.net].
An Intel Core 2 Duo U9400 1.4Ghz [intel.com], on the same benchmark, gets 963 [cpubenchmark.net].
For reference, an Intel Core i3 330UM @ 1.20GHz scores 1196 and an Intel Core2 Duo U9600 @ 1.60GHz scores 1129.
CPU speeds on these new Macbook Airs seem to be... rather pathetic
That's like asking for a big rig with a trailer to pull 1G on a skidpad or a Tesla Roadster to tow a big rig trailer.
Is the Air underpowered? Of course. But you find me an 11" form factor laptop that doesn't look like a giant brick and has a 2ghz+ i7. Not even the Dell Alienware M11x offers more than a 1.06ghz i7 or 1.3ghz Core 2.
So, iOS ~ XBox & OS X ~ Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
ultimately, it will have Windows for business, and XBox for consumers. Apple will work on a similar distribution.
Yeah, I think they'll call their business distribution OS X. It'll be a lot like Windows.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
Do you really think Adobe or Microsoft or anyone else who can actually market their software on their own is going to give Apple 30%?
What do you think Adobe or Microsoft's wholesale prices currently are? I guarantee you that they get well under 70% of the retail price for sold software.
Re:Ron Gilbert (Score:3, Informative)
Did they remove Java?
In a word, yes. They're dropping support for Java and disallowing apps that use Java from their app store.
I have a sneaking suspiscion you don't have a Mac to get rid of...
I currently have a unibody macbook pro and have been using mac laptops for the past four years (I know, not long). These changes sure seem to share a lot of similarity to iphone policy to me.