Apple Updates MacBook Air, Announces OS X ‘Lion’, iLife 11 and More

We know, we know, Apple announced all this new cool stuff yesterday. Sadly, we were having some technical problems here at the site yesterday and we didn’t get a chance to bring you the news about what the company announced. So, in the interest of thoroughness, here’s what Apple had to say. Get your credit cards ready.

First up is the new version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. This version, known as OS X 10.7 or Lion, sports the following new features and enhancements:

• Multitouch gesture support
• App Store: Mac apps available in a centralized location with a payment system, 1-click purchasing, customer reviews, screenshots, etc
• Launchpad – app home screens for OS X
• Full-screen apps
• Auto-save and auto-resume within apps
• Mission Control: unification of full-screen apps, Expose, Spaces and Dashboard

Lion will launch this coming Summer, though no specific release date was provided. The Mac App Store will be available within 90 days, however, as an addition to Snow Leopard.

Next, let’s turn to Apple’s suite of applications called iLife. As expected, the suite was updated to give us the new iLife ’11.

Here’s the specs:

iPhoto ‘11

• New full screen mode with Core Graphics enhancements
• Full screen places, albums, location views
• Facebook enhancements; with comments
• Sharing panel lets to know who you’ve sent photo to and what friends on social networks (Flickr, Facebook) are commenting
• Emailing photos from within the iPhoto application itself
• New email templates
• New slideshow themes are included
• Improved book creation
• New themes and book layout
• Addition of letterpress cards
• High-quality pressed cards

iMovie ‘11

• Better audio editing
• Sophisticated editing made simple
• Live, wave-form audio editing right from the timeline
• One-step effects
• People finder
• News and sports themes
• The ability to construct movie trailers
• Pre-bundled movie trails will allow users to custom-build a movie trailer intro, trailer, and credits.
• Easy, wizard-like interface for simple operation

Garageband

• Flex time – Allows users to stretch-out or shorten recorded tracks
• Groove Matching – Allows users to set a master track and have Garageband align off-beat tracks to the master
• More effects
• New ways to learn instruments
• Animated instruments, practice lessons, more songs

Last, but certainly not least, was the expected refresh of the MacBook Air lineup. The laptop sports a new look as well as new specs and pricing. Here’s the details:

MacBook Air 13.3-inch

• 13.3-inch LED backlit display, 1440 x 900 pixels
• 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• NVidia GeForce 320M GPU
• SD card reader, 2 USB ports, a Mini DisplayPort, a 3.5mm audio jack and a straight MagSafe port
• Instant-on
• Multitouch glass trackpad
• Full aluminum unibody construction
• 128GB or 256GB SSD
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• FaceTime camera
• 0.68-inches thin at its thickest point, 0.11-inches at its thinnest
• 2.9 lbs
• Battery life: 7 hours usage, 30 days standby

MacBook Air 11.6-inch

• 11.6-inch LED backlit display, 1366 x 768 pixels
• 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• NVidia GeForce 320M GPU
• 2 USB ports, a Mini DisplayPort and a straight MagSafe port
• Instant-on
• Multitouch glass trackpad
• Full aluminum unibody construction
• 64GB or 128GB SSD
• 802.11n Wi-Fi
• FaceTime camera
• 0.68-inches thin at its thickest point, 0.11-inches at its thinnest
• 2.3 lbs
• Battery life: 5 hours usage, 30 days standby

The new MacBook Air models are available immediately online and Apple stores should be getting inventory soon. Pricing starts at $999 for the 11.6-inch model with a 64GB SSD ($1,199 for 128GB SSD), and all the way up to $1,599 for the 13-inch model with a 256GB SSD ($1,399 for 128GB SSD).