Apple’s Press Event Brings Us iLife 11, FaceTime For Macs, The New Mac OS X Lion 10.7, And The New MacBook Airs

Today was Apple’s big ‘Back To The Mac’ press event and boy did they unload the goodies with this one.  The unveiled the new iLife which updates iPhoto, GarageBand, and iMovie to do even more amazing things to allow everyday people learn and do things on a professional level.  It is available today for $49 upgrade and will come pre-installed on all new Macs.

Apple announced FaceTime for Mac so now everyone with a Mac can video chat/call those with an iPhone 4 or the newest iPod Touch.  A beta version of the app is available today and can be downloaded here.   The only requirement needed is for your Mac to run Mac OS X Snow Leopard with an Apple ID.

Mac offered the world a preview of their new Mac OS X Lion  10.7 which merges iOS with the previous version of the Mac OS to offer the App Store for Mac, auto saving/resuming data, and more abilities to add to your Mac.  The Lion OS will arrive this summer with the App Store for Mac becoming available in 90 days.

And last but not least, Apple unveiled their new MacBook Airs to the world and it was just as the rumors spoke on specs and price-wise.   Two new models coming in a 11.6inch model and a 13.3inch model with more battery life, more SSD flash storage, and even lighter/thinner.   Check out the full specs on everything below after the break.

iLife 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

• 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

• Flex time
  • Allows users to stretch-out or shorten recorded tracks
  • Example given was a musician who forget to hold a long chord as the end of a track; flex time can stretch out that tracks last chord.
• Groove Matching
  • Allows users to set a master track and have Garageband align off-beat tracks to the master
  • “Automatic spell checker for bad rhythm.”
• More effects
• New ways to learn instruments
  • Animated instruments, practice lessons, more songs

FaceTime For Macs

• Video call/chat from your Mac to iPhone 4 and latest iPod Touch users

Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

• Think OS X meets the iPad
• Multi-touch gestures w/ trackpad support
• App Store for Macs (coming in 90 days)
• Full screen apps
• Launchpad: app home screens for OS X
• Auto saving/resuming data

MacBook Air

• 11.6inch (1366 x 768 resolution) and 13.3inch (1440 x 900 resolution) LED screen
• 11.6inch weighs 2.3lbs and the 13.3inch weighs 2.9lbs
• Core 2 Duo processor (1.4GHz in 11.6inch and 1.86GHz in 13.3inch)
• Available in 2GB or 4GB of RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce 320m
• Multi-touch trackpad
• Wi-Fi N support, no 3G support
• FaceTime camera
• SSD Flash storage (64GB, 128GB, and 256GB)
• Battery life: 5 hours on 11.6inch and 7 hours on 13.3inch, both with 30 days standby
• 11.6inch 64GB/ $999, 128GB/$1,199
• 13.3inch 128GB/$1,299, 256GB/$1,599
• Available starting today