There was a flurry of rumors about today’s event. Happily these rumors have now been put to rest.
Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, made the presentation at the companies headquarters. It started at 10am PDT, 1pm EDT, and lasted for about 1 and 1/2 hours.
The announcements give Apple a strong consumer Mac line-up for the back-to-school and holiday seasons.The announcements included:
- major updates to the iMac line of consumer computers;
- the release of iLife 08 and iWork 08;
- enhancements to .Mac; and
- a refresh of the Mac Mini.
Here’s the details of the announcements:
iMac:
New thinner high quality aluminum, plastic and glass based iMac.
- Intel Core 2 Duo processors. 2.4GHz-2.8GHz
- Up to 4 GB memory, faster ATI Radeon HD 2400XT graphics
- 802.11N wireless
- Up to 1 TB storage
- Firewire 800, 400
- 3 USB 2.0
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Video Out
- Built in iSight and Mic.
- Slot loaded SuperDrive
- Easy memory upgrade
- 20″ and 24″ glossy displays
- Available today…$1,199 – $1,799
New slim design keyboard with special dedicated keys, dimmer, brighter, Expose”, Dashboard and media control
A new wireless keyboard and “Mighty Mouse” are also available, Bluetooth 2.0.
iLife 08:
Announcing iLife 08, the biggest enhancement since iLife’s first introduction.
IPhoto is greatly enhanced. Events, Hiding Photos, New Editing Tools, Improved Printing/Books/Calendars, New Skimming Feature similar to Aperture’s Album Pick. It also integrates tightly with .Mac in order to create Web galleries. Leveraging this concept, the iPhone can talk to .Mac and email photo’s to a specific Web gallery.
iMovie, is completely new. Many new tools and features which allow you to add polish very quickly. You can export for the iPod, IPhone, Apple TV and .Mac Web galleries. iMovie now also has build in YouTube sharing.
iWeb enhancements including “live” Web widgets. The new iWeb also features support for Google’s AdSense technology and will support personal domains instead of just iMac.
iDVD enhanced for better performance and 10 additional themes.
Garageband upgraded with a new feature call Magic Garage Band.
iLife 08 is available today at $79 and work with both Tiger and Leopard.
.Mac:
Enhanced to support all the features of iLife 08. Beginning today, all subscribers are being allocated 10GB of storage, 10 times the current amount. Data transfer limits have been raised to 100GB/month.
iWork 08:
iWork has been dramatically enhanced with new features for the Keynote, presentation software and the Pages, page layout software.
There’s now a new intelligent tables spreadsheet named “Numbers,” done in the style of Keynote and Pages. Steve Jobs stated that it imports and exports “almost all” documents from Microsoft Excel.
iWork 08 is available today for $79 and work with both Tiger and Leopard.
Mac Mini:
The Mac Mini was refreshed with a faster processor.
During a question and answer segment at the end of the event, Steve Jobs stated that the iPhone’s “multitouch” features does make a lot of sense for use in the Mac and that he would classify it as a research project at present.
Technorati Tags: .mac, apple, ilife, imac, iwork, mac, mini