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.
App Store looks interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
It gets rid of a lot of developer headaches, including finding a place with high bandwidth mirrors for consumers to download and fetch updates.
Yes, Apple gets a 30% chunk, but IMHO, it is a good thing to have long term.
Is there really a market for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, App Store for iPhone / iPod touch? I get that. It's basically the first of its kind and creates its own market share. Apps which would have been trivial and/or freeware for a desktop could be sold to mobile users if they were good or early to market enough. Kinds of apps that would be made wholly useless given a full-size-screen web browser and a keyboard could have a market, too.
But for the Mac? When roughly all Mac users are dual booting Windows anyway?
Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ron Gilbert (Score:2, Interesting)
And people bitch at me when I say that Apple is driving towards exactly this.
Because they aren't. You know it's funny how Linux users constantly bitch and moan about Apple and Microsoft not having something comparable to a respository for their OSes and yet when Apple does something just like that it's now claimed that the OS is going to be locked-down despite the fact that Apple has repeatedly stated that OS X won't be.
Anyone else noticing the CPU situation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that every other comment under the sun here is going to focus on the app store and DRM concerns, but I'm also somewhat concerned about the fact that CPU speeds on these new Macbook Airs seem to be... rather pathetic. C2D 1.4 and 1.86 Ghz processors? Is Xcode really that much better at leveraging the GPU, to where they can release something like this when announcing Lion and its new features that sound like they're going to brutalize processing power. With CPU speeds like these, it almost seems like they just didn't want to say the word 'Atom'.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not exactly free to do it on your own. For a small shop it's a huge benefit to not have to deal with all that infrastructure and hiring and payment processing. A one or two person team can focus on development and not worry about the other headaches. It will bring me back to developing Mac software.
Re:Not a fan, but Jobs is right (Score:4, Interesting)
Your father-in-law is apparently ridiculously more tech-savvy than mine, who needs to visit the Apple Store Geniuses for help multiple times every month.
I honestly don't think Apple has made money off of him, in the grand scheme of things.
Re:Anyone else noticing the CPU situation? (Score:3, Interesting)
The store is back now, so I went and had a look. The CPU on the Air can now go up to 2.13GHz. That's about the speed of my current MacBook Pro, and to be honest I rarely tax it - the big thing I'd want to upgrade in this machine is the RAM, which is limited to 3.25GB due to a crappy Intel northbridge.
The most interesting thing is how cheap the SSDs are in the Air. In the other MacBooks, upgrading to a 256GB SSD is £600, but you can get an Air with one for £1350. A 13" MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD and 4GB of RAM is actually cheaper than a 13" MacBook Pro with the same amount of RAM, SSD and GPU, although the MBP has a slightly faster CPU (2.66GHz vs 2.13GHz). Hopefully they'll drop the prices on the SSDs for the rest of the MacBook line soon.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
How much do you think currently goes to hosting, credit card processing, chargebacks, etc? 70% of end-consumer cost is pretty reasonable for an overall take. If you're going boxed, I'd be surprised if you got %20 out of the deal. Older shareware processing companies did a 50/50 split. I don't know what is standard in shareware now, but 70/30 seems reasonable. And if you're thinking of doing individual credit card transactions on unit sales of $2 each, forget about it. The card fees will eat you alive.
And it will probably be a very, very long time before the Mac is locked down that much. They need independent applications, flash, and all of the rest in order to work as a system. Unless they re-write OSX from the ground up, there can't be that level of system protection. Of course, they'd need Adobe and their other major vendors to agree to ceeding that much power too, and we all know how likely that is to happen.
I don't know. I really hope a centralized store where anyone can sell anything will usher in a second golden era of Mac shareware. Where the lack of $100 retail applications will be balanced out by tons of amazing $5 tools. Where independent stuff like CopyWrite can thrive. Real retail applications aren't thriving on the Mac anyway, and a thriving small tools market was what kept us mac users sane back in the OS7 days.
Re:Is there really a market for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
While it may be a warning shot, Steam does still have distinct advantages:
1. Little to no censorship. I'm trying to imagine Left 4 Dead 2 on the app store, and I just can't see it.
2. Login anywhere, download anywhere. With a username and password on Steam, you can get at all of your games.
3. Friends / Teams. Teams are especially important for online games.
4. PC compatibility. Write once for Steam on the PC, utilize for Steam on the Mac.
5. PC cross purchase. Buy once for the Mac, have it for the PC. Just in case.
It's not perfect, but it definitely helps them.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, and people talk about the "Microsoft tax". How long until the only way to get software on your Mac desktop is via Apple's store and all Mac developers are required to pay a 30% tribute to Apple? And, since taxes are passed on to consumers, every time you as a customer buys an "app" from the store it's really you who's paying that insane 30%.
Let me preface this by saying that I am against the one-company-to-rule-them-all model that Apple seems to adore. And one of the reasons is exactly the point you bring up above. However, I think there is something to be said about the user experience brought about by having one company (in this case, the platform and hardware developer, Apple) whose feet are ultimately held to fire for the quality of the applications that are available to end-users on their platform (yes this does and WILL apply to Apple).
To illustrate, let me reference the well-known fall of the great Atari, which began the Atari 2600 [slashdot.org] games market fiasco. This was a great piece of hardware destroyed by reams of shitty games on store shelves (see for yourself, look up ET for the 2600). The Nintendo NES that followed about 2 or 3 years later in 1985 (after most of the North American gaming industry had imploded) was well-known for its third-party licensing agreements which helped (while obviously not perfect) to ensure some quality games on store shelves. As a result, the NES was super successful and the gaming industry was reborn.
If Apple is to the Nintendo and the NES, what Microsoft is to that shit that was allowed to happen with 2600 (note, that I do think Atari was an innovator for having introducing home gaming to NA in the first place!), then I think we have an idea of what Apple's future might be if they decide to lock down their platforms. That is, there will enjoy probably another 10 or 15 years of success and astounding revenue, but they can definitely expect some tremendous and very unlikely competitors down the road.
Re:App Store looks interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The new Air is a joke (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't normally defend Apple but you're really comparing two different product lines. They still have a replacement for your 12" powerbook, it is called a MacBook Pro (13"). Ok, it is one inch more, but it is still small and has all the bells and whistles you're droning on about.
The Air series seems to target portability users where weight and size requirements trump all others. A MacBook Pro 13" comes in at 4.5lbs, while the MacBook Air 13" comes in at 2.9lbs, and the 11" version at 2.3lbs.
You simply can't argue much when the thing has nearly half the volume and weight of the fully loaded version. If the weight simply doesn't matter get the Pro. But for some people like myself, every pound counts when you're on the go. So I'll gladly shed things like dvd drives, ethernet ports, firewire, and even a GHz of CPU if it means 2 pounds less in weight. Obviously I have limitations: the atom cpu is much too slow for my needs and most integrated graphics solutions still don't cut it these days. The Air still comes with a good GPU and a good CPU. So there isn't much to complain about.