Apple Introduces New Laptops and an App Store for Mac

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, took the stage at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., today to talk about upgrades to the company’s iLife and Mac OS products,

(Apple said its event on Wednesday will include “a sneak peek of the next major version of Mac OS X.”)

 and to unveil two new MacBook Air models. Our live updates from the press event, including color commentary from Sam Grobart, our personal tech editor, are below.

2:29 P.M.

Wrapping Up

And that’s the end. Check back for our article with more news and analysis from the event.

2:18 P.M.
More on the MacBook Air Upgrade

Mr. Jobs says the new MacBook Air has battery life of 7 hours when using Wi-Fi, and 30 days of standby time. “We are really happy with the improvement in battery life,” he says.


Sam says: Nice to see that Apple is moving toward more reality-based battery tests. The older standards were basically worthless.

In addition to the Air with a 13.3-inch screen, Mr. Jobs shows off one with an 11.6-inch screen, weighing 2.3 pounds.

This one has a 5-hour battery life when using Wi-Fi and the same 30 days of standby time.

Pricing: $999 for the 11.6-inch screen with 64 gigabytes of storage, $1,199 for 128 gigabytes. For the model with the 13-inch screen: $1,299 for 128 gigabytes, $1,599 for 256 gigabytes.

Mr. Jobs says this pricing is aggressive. “We see these as the next generation of MacBooks,” he said. Both models available today.

Sam notes: The old MacBook Air was $1,499 or $1,799, depending on the processor. I can’t travel with an iPad. But these? These’ll work.

2:12 P.M.
New MacBook Air

Mr. Jobs says there’s “one more thing” and comes back to the theme for the day, “Back to the Mac.”

“We asked ourselves what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up.” It’s a new MacBook Air.

“It is like nothing we’ve ever created before,” Mr. Jobs says. It is 0.68 inches at the thickest point and tapers down to 0.11 inches. Weighs 2.9 pounds. It has a full-size keyboard and trackpad, with a 13.3-inch L.E.D. back-lit high-res display.

Inside there’s a Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics card — but no optical drive and no hard drive. All the storage is flash. Why? “We know the benefit from the iPad.” It allows for “instant on,” is faster, smaller and lighter, and is completely silent.

1:58 P.M.
Details on the New OS
 

There is no touchscreen component to Lion. Mr. Jobs says touch-screen technology on a laptop is ergonomically wrong. Instead, the multitouch technology will be built into the trackpad and the mouse.

Lion comes with a new feature called Mission Control that allows you to find all of the windows, widgets and apps running on your Mac in one place. Before that, windows and widgets were handled in different ways.

A new “launch pad” allows you to see all of your apps, and with a flick of the finger on the trackpad scroll through various screens of them. It looks a lot like the iPad interface.

You’ll have to wait a bit for Lion. The plan is to release it next summer. The App Store, however, will come sooner, in 90 days, and will be available on Snow Leopard. Apple will begin accepting app submissions in November.

Sam says: It appears that Apple will encourage Mac software developers to sell through the App Store. But will that apply to heavy hitters like Microsoft and Adobe? Will they surrender 30 percent of the sales price to Apple for that privilege? It’s the same sales split as exists for iOS apps.

1:54 P.M.
Release the Lions

Mr. Jobs moves on to what he calls the “entree” for the day, a new release of Mac OS X, called Lion, that brings features that exist on the iPhone and iPad “back to the Mac.”

Lion comes with multitouch gestures, an app store and app home screens that play in full-screen mode on your computer.

Sam says: The integration begins. Lion is OS X with a dash of iOS. (But is it me, or does “Lion” ring flat? Doesn’t have quite the punch of “Tiger” or “Panther.”)

1:49 P.M.
FaceTime on the Mac

We are moving on to FaceTime, the video calling feature on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Mr. Jobs says Apple has shipped 19 million FaceTime-ready devices. Now FaceTime comes to the Mac. You can initiate a FaceTime call from the Mac and use it in full-screen mode. A beta release is available today.

1:48 P.M.
Rounding Up iLife 11

ILife 11 is free with every new Mac, Mr. Jobs says, and is $49 for people who want to upgrade just the iLife product. It is available today.

1:39 P.M.
New GarageBand

“We think people are going to have tons of fun” with iMovie 11, Mr. Jobs says. Now on to a demo of GarageBand. Xander Soren, product marketing manager, comes on stage.

A new “groove matching” feature allows you to sync tracks in a band that are out of sync. ” It is like an automatic spell checker for bad rhythm,” Mr. Soren says.

Sam notes: “We don’t want our songs sounding robotic,” says Mr. Soren. Someone’s not a Kraftwerk fan, apparently.

The software has interactive piano and guitar lessons for various levels of players.

Sam again: GarageBand as music instructor is intriguing. The program always seemed too specialized to me — what if you don’t play an instrument? This makes it more relevant.

A new interactive feature shows you in real time when you make mistakes playing a piece. It shows wrong notes or problems with your timing as you play the piano or the guitar. Garage Band will keep track of your performances and track your improvements, or lack thereof, in a chart.

Back to Steve, who says there are more than 5 million people using GarageBand.

1:24 P.M.
iMovie Update
 

Back to Mr. Jobs for a look at iMovie 11. “This is a great release,” he says, adding that the No. 1 request Apple got was for better audio editing. So the new version has new audio editing features and a mode that can create “movie trailers” with virtually no effort.

Sam says: So much fun with the audio effects in real time. You can slow voices down, add robot sound effects, speed up, change pitch, add other echo and reverb effects, just by hovering over different buttons. Lots of time will be wasted playing with this feature.

The automatic trailer feature allows you to create mock trailers with rolling credits naming your “cast,” and fake movie music, including some recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Sam says: Now if they had hired the “In a world” guy, that would be something. But the make-your-own-trailers feature is pretty darn cool. We are now all movie stars… or B-list actors, at least. All of the title sequences ape production company logos at the beginning: Columbia, Paramount, etc.

You can automatically share your movies on YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo.

1:19 P.M.
iPhoto 11 Details
 

A new panel in iPhoto lets you know what’s happened with a photograph, for instance telling you who you e-mailed it to, whether or not you posted it on Facebook (and comments that your friends have made) and where it was taken. The software now also automates the creation of photo books and makes them easy to customize.

Sam Grobart says: Integration with Facebook and Flickr is a little bit of the mountain moving to Mohammed — bringing the cloud into Apple’s ecosystem.

1:09 P.M.
New Products: iLife 11

“Let’s move on to some new products,” Mr. Jobs says. He introduces a new version of iLife, iLife 11. The iPhoto application has new ways to e-mail photos and to post them on Facebook.

Phil Schiller, a senior vice president, comes up to do a demo.

Sam notes: Attention Anthropologie shoppers: Letterpress cards now in iPhoto 11.

Mr. Schiller demonstrates a slicker, full-screen version of iPhoto, which has a new map view where photos that are geotagged can be surfaced quickly on the map. With a single click, iPhoto can do a slide show of all your pictures from, say, London. It can also automatically create multimedia slide shows for any album or place you select.

The software can find your Facebook or Flickr photos so you can look at them in iPhoto. Also there’s a slicker interface to e-mail photos within iPhoto, without having to go over to your e-mail client.

Sam again: Who are the people in Apple photo demonstrations? Are they the 21st-century equivalent of people in drugstore photo frames?

Showing a picture of a koala. “Everyone loves koalas,” Mr. Schiller says.

1:04 P.M.
The Mac Business
 

Mr. Cook opens with an overview of the Macintosh business. It accounted for 33 percent of Apple’s revenue, or $22 billion, in the fiscal year that just closed. “The Mac company, if it were a standalone company, and we have no plans to do that, would be 110 on the Fortune 100 list,” he said.

Mr. Cook says Apple sold 13.7 million Macs in the past year, or three times more than it had three years earlier. And in the most recent quarter, Mac sales surged 27 percent, or 2.5 times faster than the 11 percent growth rate of the overall market for personal computers.

Mr. Cook said the Mac growth has outpaced the overall market for the past 18 quarters. It now makes up 20.7 of the United States consumer market, according to NPD. “The tent with the Mac is getting larger and larger,” he said.

Back to Steve.

Sam Grobart, our personal tech editor, notes: Mr. Cook refers to Consumer Reports as far as customer satisfaction rankings for Macs. Remember that this is the same Consumer Reports that arguably fomented one of the last big Apple events — the iPhone 4 “antennagate” event, when it said it could not recommend the phone.

1:00 P.M.
Kicking Off With the Mac

Mr. Jobs thanks everyone for coming. “State of the Mac” is on the big screen, and Tim Cook, chief operating officer, is on stage.

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