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Apple Fights Back In Video Chat With FaceTime for the Mac
Apple will soon have a whole bunch of new users for its FaceTime video chat application. At today's "Back to the Mac" event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company is making a beta version of FaceTime video chat available today from Apple.com.

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New MacBook Air Unboxing
Janko Roettgers of our sister site NewTeeVee already managed to get his hands on a brand new MacBook Air. Enjoy his unboxing video while I stew in my jealousy.

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Back to the Mac: The App Store for Mac
You're not alone if you've ever wondered when the convenience of the App Store that's graced your iOS devices would be unleashed on your Mac. Apple's "Back to the Mac" event this morning revealed that the wait will soon be over.

After over seven billion app downloads from the iOS app store, the crew in Cupertino is bringing the same model to a Mac near you. Steve Jobs said it would arrive in 90 days during today’s presentation, but on Apple’s official site, it’s simply listed as “Coming Soon.”

While Jobs mentioned that the Mac App Store won't be the only place to purchase apps (third party vendors will keep selling as before), this new feature could open the application floodgates for developers and consumers alike. After all, when was the last time you visited your local Apple Store or Best Buy and perused the software aisle?

Consumers can plan on enjoying the majority of the features we've come to love in the current iOS App Store, such as one-click downloads, immediate app installation, and automatic updates. The system of separating paid & free apps and dividing apps into categories (Games, Productivity, etc.) will provide the same browsing on the Mac that we’ve grown accustomed to on our iOS devices.

App description, reviews/ratings, and screenshots looked virtually identical to what you’ll see on the iPad. A slight altering of the store layout is the only difference that you’ll notice.

Can developers expect another app gold-rush? With a 70/30 revenue split, the Mac App Store will provide fresh means of distributing apps, ensure copyright is easier to track, and ease the marketing burden on devs. Like I mentioned before, as a consumer, I'm not racing to a brick & mortar store very often for an app these days, but I’m almost guaranteed to purchase at least a few with this new level of accessibility.

My first question is whether or not the versatility of the Mac will be compromised by the simplicity of the App Store and other features. Launchpad and Mission Control provide options that continue to blur the lines between OS X and iOS. Also, the coming multi-touch features, while helpful, seems to indicate a focus shift towards ease of use rather than variety of control.

How will Apple navigate this accessibility/versatility balance? Will consumers and developers both benefit from the Mac App Store in the same ways that they have from the iOS version? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

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OS X Lion: Lessons Learned From iOS

Yes, the name for Mac OS X 10.7 is Lion. Steve Jobs introduced the new OS today by going into the philosophy behind the new features. Lion is going to take what Apple has learned from iOS and apply it to OS X. As Jobs puts it, “Mac OS X meets the iPad.” The Apple CEO laid out six things they’ve learned from developing iOS that they want to apply to OS X:
1. Multi-touch gestures
2. The App Store
3. App home screens
4. Full-screen apps
5. Autosave
6. Apps resume when launched
Craig Federighi, VP of engineering for OS X, demoed four of the new features: a Mac App Store, a home screen-style app switcher known as Launchpad, full-screen apps, and a new way to “instantly navigate to anywhere” called Mission Control.

Mac App Store

The new App Store is going to be integrated into Lion. It works exactly the same way as the App Store on iOS, but with Mac software. It has icons in the toolbar that work the same way as the tabs on the iOS version. Jobs mentioned six characteristics of the new store:
1. Best place to discover apps (but not the only one).
2. One click downloads.
3. Free and paid apps (Developers get 70% revenue).
4. Automatic installation.
5. Automatic application updates.
6. Applications licensed for use on all personal Macs.
The Mac App Store is coming in 90 days to Snow Leopard, too, so we won’t have to wait that long to get our hands on it. It’ll probably require a system update when it does arrive.

Launchpad

Launchpad can be summed up as the iOS home screen for Mac; a full-screen grid of all your applications laid out over the desktop (but not obscuring the Dock or Menubar). It works the exact same way as on iOS: You even get folders and multiple pages. You can navigate around Launchpad by flicking left and right on your trackpad or Magic Mouse.

Honestly, I can’t see myself using this much. I mean, why not just use Spotlight to launch things? From the demo, it appears to be just a separate application in the Dock, so it doesn’t look like Apple will be forcing you to use it, luckily.

Full-screen Apps

Of course, on an iPad, every application is full-screen. But on the Mac, having everything work that way just isn’t practical, so Apple’s found a way to get the best of both worlds. In Lion, clicking on the green “zoom” button will make your application go full-screen. It wasn’t made clear whether the zoom button would always make an app full-screen, or whether it’ll be application-specific.

Mission Control

Jobs mentioned four things that they have in OS X now: Exposé, Full-screen apps, Dashboard, and Spaces. Lion will combine these elements into a new feature known as Mission Control. Basically, it’s Exposé on steroids.

There will be a new gesture to trigger Mission Control, and when you do, you’ll get all of your open windows, but with several new features. Full-screen apps appear at the top, along with a shortcut for the desktop and Dashboard. Regular windows appear below that, and windows from the same application are grouped together, much like stacks in webOS 2.0.

Availability and Other Features

The two features Jobs didn’t go into in-depth were autosaving and apps resuming when launched. Autosave is easy to grasp, but I wonder how it’s going to be accomplished. Say you create a new document in TextEdit. Where is the document saved? If my Mac crashes, and I haven’t given the document a name yet, then how do I get to the document?

The other feature, app resuming, is harder to imagine. OS X already has multitasking, so why do we need the kind of “not really” multitasking found in iOS?

As for availability, OS X Lion is coming Summer of 2011, and according to Jobs is right on schedule to make that release window.

Which new feature are you most looking forward to? What else do you want to see that wasn’t mentioned?

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New MacBook Air is the Future of Notebooks
Beginning his presentation by waxing philosophical on the impact of iOS devices on Apple industrial design, Jobs rhetorically asked what would happen if an iPad and a MacBook Air “hooked up?” The result is the new MacBook Air. Proving the rumormongers right, the new MacBook Air will come in two distinct models, with screen sizes of 13.3 inches and 11.6 inches respectively.

Both models will share the aluminum unibody construction design, and a number of features, including Core 2 Duo CPUs, NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPUs, full-size keyboards, multi-touch trackpads (no button) and a FaceTime (not iSight any longer) camera.

The biggest internal change will be the use of solid-state storage across the lineup, which was a major rumor circulating about the new MacBook Air. The new storage system, which doesn’t appear to be upgradable, will have “instant on” capabilities similar to iOS devices, and be up to twice as fast as standard hard drives. This will also allow for a standby time of thirty freaking-amazing days.

Sporting an even more wedge-shaped design, the new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will have a backlit-LED with a resolution of 1440 x 900, making for a higher pixel density than the current MacBook Pro line. Only 0.68 inches at its thickest point, and 0.11 at its thinnest, it’ll be thinner than the previous MacBook Air. At 2.9 pounds, it’ll be even lighter than its predecessor.

In terms of battery life, it appears that not even Apple can defy the laws of physics, as the new MacBook Air will only jump from five hours to seven hours under normal usage. However, Jobs said Apple is using a new method to test battery life that should produce more accurate results. Even so, battery life may be an issue with the 11.6-inch model, which is reported to get only five hours. However, that’s made up for by an even greater degree of portability, since the computer weighs only 2.3 pounds.

As for price, the new MacBook Air will start at $999 for the 11.6-inch model, the same price as the 13.3-inch MacBook. The new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will start at $1,299, a hundred dollars more than the low-end MacBook Pro. RAM is upgradable from the stock 2GB to 4GB for an extra $100. CPU speeds will start at 1.4 GHz on the low-end 11.6-inch model and go up to 2.13 GHz for an extra $100 on the 13.3-inch model. Here, many of the rumors, which asserted everything from 2GHz-plus Core 2 Duos to Intel’s Core i-series, were just plain wrong.

You won’t need to get an external optical drive to reinstall software with this generation of MacBook Air. Instead, Apple introduced a flash-based Software Reinstall Drive that ships with the computer. Just stick that into one of its two USB 2.0 ports and you’re good to go. Other ports on the Air include a Mini DisplayPort, a MagSafe adapter, and a headphone jack.

Arguably, the CPU and battery life are probably the biggest disappointments in the new MacBook Air, but this is more than balanced by the aggressive pricing, at least for Apple. Apple appears to have no problems playing with the price divisions of its carefully segmented Mac portable lineup, and that may be the biggest change to come out of today.

When Steve Jobs said he believed “all notebooks will be like this one day,” (meaning no optical drives, flash storage, lightweight and small), you can bet that we’ll see the rest of the MacBook lineup take on these changes down the road.

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Back to the Mac: FaceTime on the Mac
It’s one of the things we predicted last week, and something everybody has been clamoring for: FaceTime for Mac. It was just announced at Apple’s Back to the Mac event, and luckily we won’t even have to wait for 10.7 to arrive this summer to get it.

Jobs started the announcement of the feature by talking about the number of users who already have a FaceTime enabled device — already 19 million since debut of the iPhone 4, the first with the feature, four months ago.

He then went on to demo the new Mac application. Note that this isn’t built into iChat; it’s a standalone app. Sitting down at the demo Mac, he fired up the program and initiated a FaceTime call to Phil Schiller. During this call, he demonstrated a couple of great features.

First was how easy it is to start a call — just click the name of the contact you want to call. It draws from your Address Book, so you shouldn’t have to add new contacts if that’s up to date. Also, if your recipient is on an iPhone 4 or a new FaceTime-enabled iPod touch, and they re-orient their device, the window on your Mac turns round to keep the view consistent.

There’s a beta of FaceTime for Mac available for free today, ready to download from the Apple website. This is a nice step forward for the video calling service from Apple.

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Back to the Mac: GarageBand and iMovie '11
New versions of iMovie ’11 and GarageBand ’11 were demoed today at the Apple event, the only other two programs from iLife ’11 that got screen time aside from iPhoto ’11. There were some very interesting additions to the software, including trailers for iMovie and more teaching ability for GarageBand.

iMovie ’11

Judging by the amount of time devoted to the feature, the bit Apple wanted us to focus on with iMovie ’11 is the ability to create trailers for your home movies. It does look pretty cool. There are a series of built-in themes, with scores recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. You can change the studio name and logo, cast information and subtitles. While I’m not sure of the overall value of this feature to the average user, I can see it being neat if the entire purpose of your movie project is to create a spoof trailer for YouTube.

Also demoed were new audio effects. Showing a cute demo of a kid holding an icicle saying, “Luke, I am your father,” Apple demoed changing the pitch of his voice to resemble Darth Vader’s. You can also easily adjust the volume of different clips to make them more uniform.

An easy way to create an instant replay has also been introduced. You just select an area, click Instant Replay, choose the speed, and boom, you’re on your way to making your own highlight reel.

There’s also now integration with Facebook and Vimeo built-in. One question I have is, will it also pull Facebook comments like the new iPhoto does?

I’m a little disappointed they didn’t add better timeline support, but it’s clear to me now that iMovie is geared towards taking clips and shoving them together. So long as you’re not aiming to do much more than make home movies, iMovie ’11 seems like a great upgrade.

GarageBand ’11

My days of recording music are behind me, but like most amateur musicians, when me and the band did record, we tended to suffer from timing issues. Inevitably, someone was slightly off, requiring retakes or a close-enough attitude. GarageBand now has a new groove matching feature. You can select the best rhythm track — hopefully it’s the drummer, or you’ve likely got problems GarageBand can’t solve — and then have all the tracks “snap” to this track. In the demo, a group of players that sounded like a cat on a hot tin roof magically sounded like seasoned studio musicians. I’m curious to see how this one works in real life.

They seem to have really improved the music lessons portion of the app, too. You can play along with the lesson and it shows how you’re doing. If you make a mistake, it shows in red. If your rhythm is off it shows it in yellow. You can replay your lesson and keep a history to track your improvements over time.

iLife ’11 is available today. It’s free when you buy a new Mac, or $49 on its own.

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Back to the Mac: iPhoto '11
Phil Schiller, SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple, was on hand at today’s event to demonstrate the new features of iPhoto ’11. One of the most striking changes to iPhoto is a new focus on a full-screen interface which closely resembles some iPad interfaces. In full-screen mode, there’s a toolbar to select Events, Faces, Places, and Albums, all of which have their own custom displays.

Slideshows have been enhanced with some new themes, including a new holiday theme. More impressive than holiday cards flying around on ribbons in front of a snowflake background, is the new email feature where you can send sets of pictures with HTML templates directly from within iPhoto. It’s another feature that seems borrowed from the iPad.

The real benefit of including the email templates inside iPhoto is that you can rearrange the photos, resize them, and edit to your heart’s content before sending the message. Facebook and Flickr sharing have been updated as well, and iPhoto will automatically download pictures to your iPhoto library that have been added to these online services.

Printing books and cards has been improved. Books now use better application logic to decide how to lay out pictures, using the key photo from the iPhoto album for the cover and grouping together pictures that were taken at the same time and in the same place. iPhoto ’11 will also recognize the star ratings you’ve assigned to your photos and will give preference to higher-rated pictures for the bigger spreads.

Letterpress cards are a new choice that use embossed paper to add a high-end custom-made feel to your printed cards. There’s even a video demonstration of how letterpress cards are made to explain this option to iPhoto users.

iPhoto ’11 looks like a solid upgrade with several enhancements that will make sharing photos by email, Facebook and Flickr easier, improve slideshows and make printed books and cards even better. I think the full-screen interface looks interesting but I’ll wait to pass judgment until I’ve had a chance to use it. It’s clear that Apple is moving towards full-screen all around and is even featuring this approach in the next version of Mac OS X (10.7). Perhaps iPhoto ’11 will be the canary in the coal mine to show if this approach is a great innovation for the desktop or a simple gimmick designed to ride the coattails of the iPad.

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Back to Mac Event: Mac Platform Stronger Than Ever

CEO Steve Jobs began today’s Apple event by turning over the stage to COO Tim Cook, who gave a short “State of the Mac” speech which illustrated both the strength of the platform and its importance to Apple.

Last fiscal year the Mac accounted for 33 percent of Apple’s business, generating $22 billion in revenue, an amount that would make a “Mac company” number #11o in the Fortune 500 list. While that’s impressive, the real story is in the number of Macs sold, some 13.7 million for FY 2010, three times the number sold just five years ago.

Cook went on to point out the effect that astounding growth has had on the development community, noting that there were more than 600,000 Mac developers, and that the number was growing at a rate of 30,000 per month. Cook then noted a few premier developers like Valve with Steam, and now AutoCad for the Mac.

Moving to retail, Apple announced it now has 318 stores worldwide, visited by some 75 million people last quarter. Of the 875,000 Macs bought in Apple Stores, half were sold to people new to the platform. In the U.S., Mac market share is now at a shocking 20.7 percent of retail sales, which is astounding considering that just a decade ago Mac market share was in free fall.

Customers are happier than ever with the Mac, too. According to Cook, the Mac is the top-rated computer in terms of satisfaction going back many years from respected organizations like Consumer Reports. If you had any fears that the Mac wasn’t important to Apple, banish them now.

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"Back to the Mac" Event Live Coverage
Good news TheAppleBlog readers! We’ll have live coverage of today’s “Back to the Mac” event right here starting just before the 10 AM PT scheduled start time today. Follow along with us as Apple unveils new Macbook notebooks, a brand new version of OS X, and more. Just stay on this page hit “Refresh,” Command-R or F5 periodically to get new updates.

We’ll be providing live updates via Twitter, too, so check in with @theappleblog.

Here we are. All set for the big event. Apple put on a big spread at the cafeteria in Building 4 but I am hungry for good stuff Steve us going to share with us.

10.00 AM: Waiting for Steve.
10.01 AM: Here he is. Applause. We got some fun stuff to share with you this morning. It would be nice to bring in engineers to demo this to you. I would like to start with the state of the mac.
10.02: Tim Cook is on stage. Apple’s revenue, Mac made 33 percent of the revenue last year and it is a significant number by itself. That is $22 billion, the Mac company as a standalone company would be $110 on Fortune 500 companies. 13.7 million mac in FY 2010, 5x 2005 and 50 million users. We are growing 2.5 X the market. US consumer market, we have 20.7 percent

10.04: One in PC sold in retail in US is a Macintosh. We have a vibrant developer community. 600,000 registered Mac Developers. Adding 30,000 developers a month. We have developers like Valve (people behind Steam)

10.05: Autodesk is on a Mac and we have coveted that and we couldn’t be more pleased. We have developers who continue to develop on Mac. Office 2011 and Outlook on Mac, it is exceptionally good.
10.06: Fueling the Mac momentum is the incredible push in the Apple retail. 75 million visitors and sold 2.8 million mac in last year. 50 percent are new to Mac. 318 stores in 11 countries. Stores in China are highest trafficked of any of our stores.

10.08: Steve is back! Moving on to new products. iLife is widely regarded as the best suite of digital life applications. You can do amazing things with photos, videos, music. We keep improving it every year. We are now introducing iLife 11.

10.09: iPhoto 11 which has Facebook enhancements, full screen modes, made it really easy to email photos from within iPhone. New slideshows and big leap in books. We are printing 2 million (photo) books every years. We are adding Letterpress cards to this. Phil Schiller is on stage demoing it. New full screen places view. Location oriented photo collections are pretty awesome.

10.22: Steve is back! That is awesome. This is why we do what we do. Recaps iPhoto. We are really excited about these new features.

10.23: iMovie 11. The number one request was better audio editing and we can do extremely sophisticated editing easily. All new audio editing. One step effects. People finder and news and sports themes and the ability to construct movie trailers without much effort. On stage, Randy Ubillois, chief architect of video applications.

10.35: Demo of iMovie is over. Sharing in YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo.

10.37: New Garageband 11 and it helps you fix the rhythm in your music. It has stuff like Flex Time, Groove Matching , More Guitar amps and more. Apple product marketing Xander Soren is on stage and demoing the new software. Groove Matcher is like spell checker for bad rhythms.

10.46: 5 million people are using Garageband.

10.47: iLife 11 — all this amazing engineering has gone into these products. Free with new macs and cost $49 for upgrades. It is available today.

10.48: Steve just gave props to the engineering team behind iLife 11

10.49: Since we have introduced in 4 months. 19 million devices with Facetime. #1 request is to do Facetime calling from and to Mac. It is here. Steve demoing it. This is so simple. Nothing to set up. Simple demo. I think people are going to like it.

10.51: We are going to beta release of Facetime for Mac today. Start Facetime calling. New Logo too.

10:52: The entre for today, sneak peak of where we are going with Mac. Seven releases in one year. Today we are giving you a preview of the eight version of Mac OS X. It is called Lion.

10.53: What we have done is started with Mac OS X, created a version called iOS and invented new things. We have perfected it and now it is used in iPad. We are inspired by those innovations in iPhone and iPad and bring them back to Mac OS X. We want to bring those “back to the mac.”

10.54: Multitouch gestures can be important on the Mac too. App store has revolutionized and why not Mac too. Full screen apps. App Home Screens. Apps on the iPad on autosave and data is constantly saved and when you launch apps, they auto resume. And that be great on Mac too.

10.56: Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical, but after a short time, you start to fatigue. It is ergonomically terrible. Hence we have pads. And that is what we are doing with notebooks. A multitouch trackpad in a mouse and now pure play device.

10.57: 7 Billions apps have been downloaded from the App store. We are brining to back to the mac and we will have a Mac app store. It will best place to discover apps. One click downloads. Same free and paid apps. (70/30 split) and automatic installation and automatic app updates. Apps licenses for use on all your personal macs.

10.59: Four cool inventions – Expose, Full Screen Apps, Dashboard and Spaces — and this is great but as we have added full screen apps so we have done is combined them and it is called Mission Control and navigate the mac. Craig Federighi, VP of Mac Engineering.

11.04: The app home screen in OS-X Lion. looks pretty bad and I am not sure I like it. Bleh! I like the full screen mode in apps and it makes good use of the screen estate.

11.06: Mission Control is pretty sweet and I want it now. One click access to all apps.

11.08: Steve is back. Really excited about it. Again, a whole new way of getting apps and launching and finding apps. We will unveil it over time. Our plan is to release it in Summer 2011.

11.09: Mac App store is going to great for user and we were going to launch it on Snow Leopard and will launch in 90 days from today. We are taking app submissions in November.

11.11: There is one more thing and it back to the mac theme. Virtuous circle of creating iOS and now being back to Mac. Just like that philiopsohy it can have benefit in hardware. When Macbook meets an iPad.

11.12: iPad has instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, thin and light and no optical or hard drives. What would happen if a Macbook and an iPad hooked up? It is the most amazing thing we have created. Macbook Air. It is gorgeous and it is the future of notebooks. It is really stunning and it is really small. It is 0.68 inch thin and at the narrowed point it is 0.11 inch and weighs 2.9 lbs.

11.14: Full unibody. 13.3 inch and high-res LED display and has more pixels than Macbook Pro 15 inch. 1440 X 900pixels. Full size Multi-Touch trackpad. No optical drive and no hard drive. We have gone to flash storage.

11.15: We have gone to flash storage. Why? it is instant on. It is unto 2x faster and it is 90% smaller and lighter. It is completely silent. More reliable. We are the largest user of Flash memory in the world. 7 hours of battery life on wireless web and 30 days standby time.

11.17: we are putting Flash right on the board. 802.11n WiFi, Core2 Duo. And a massive battery. We have taken eveyrhthing we have learned from miniaturizing from iPad and iPhone and crammed it into a board.

11.18: A younger brother,11.6 inch. Smaller. 2.3 pounds. High res 1366 cx 768 pixels. 5 hours of battery life and same 30 days of standby time. We see these as next generation of MacBooks. It is going to cost $999 for 11.6 model. More pricer models. 13.3 inch top end will cost $1599. Both are available starting today.

Guess who is going to the apple store right now!

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Starbucks/Apple/Yahoo Deal Brings Free In-Store Content
Starbucks wants to give customers more than just free internet access. Through a new partnership with Apple and Yahoo, the Seattle-based coffee chain will provide customers with free content to enjoy via their Wi-Fi connection.

Among the offerings available to Starbucks customers will be music, movies and even e-books. The move is designed to draw more people in, and to provide a competitive advantage for Starbucks over low-cost competitors like McDonalds. In addition to free content, customers will also be able to purchase additional tracks, movies and books through the Starbucks launch page, a portion of the profits from which will go back to the chain.

The decision by Starbucks to offer free Wi-Fi to all customers, made in June of this year, has led to a tremendous uptick in usage. Over 30 million users accessed the web from a Starbucks store last month alone. It was a smart move by the chain, since it provided impressive numbers to shop around to content providers. No doubt the size of the potential new audience is what attracted Yahoo and Apple to the deal.

Free content will be displayed for customers via a welcome screen when they sign in to the Starbucks online portal to get Wi-Fi access. That content will also be available exclusively to Starbucks users, which is what the chain is hoping will encourage more people to walk through its doors.

Apple will be providing free music from iTunes. Its free Starbucks track of the week song directly for download using the chain’s Wi-Fi, instead of requiring users to input a code taken from a card. Other free downloads are mentioned, but no additional details are available as yet.

Other partners include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins. Users browsing with Starbucks Wi-Fi will be able to read books and newspapers for free while in-store, but will have to purchase content to take it with them elsewhere. The service is designed around the idea that customers at coffee shops are compulsive browsers, making it the ideal setting for providing free samples. It’s also a natural progression of the idea of keeping newspapers available for patrons to peruse.

I think this is a partnership that will benefit everyone, including customers. It launches today, so if you happen to check your local Starbucks to see what’s on offer, let us know what you find.

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"Back to the Mac" Event to Stream Live from Apple
Apple streamed its last event, and it seemed likely that was the start of a trend. Well, trend confirmed, as I taly’s Apple PR branch has just released an announcement saying that it will indeed be streaming the event live at Apple.com beginning today at 10 AM PDT. At least one site reports that an english-language press release is also circulating.

Here’s a quote from the document about what you’ll need to tune in:

Apple® will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com.

Honestly, I can’t believe it took them this long to do this, and I have a hard time believing they’ll ever go back to the old way. We’ll be watching right along with you later this morning. And tune in here for our coverage of the event as it unfolds.

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Apple.com Confirms New iLife, Macbook Air
Updated: Someone jumped the gun at Apple’s official Discussions page early this morning, adding new sections for iMovie ’11, iPhoto ’11 and GarageBand ’11. There’s also one called “MBA (Need official name)” which means a new MacBook Air is all but certain at today’s event.

While those basically guarantee what many already suspected, there’s also another new category, a placeholder called “Reserved 10 20.” It’s obviously a reference to today’s date, but little else is clear beyond that. Maybe Apple has an additional surprise product in its pocket, a true “one more thing?” Or, it could be for Apple’s new operating system, and remains unnamed because Apple wants to make extra sure not to give away the name before later today.

Engadget also posted additional details about the new MacBook Air ahead of today’s announcement, which it says come from a trusted source. It’s basically a full spec sheet for the 11.6-inch version we’ll supposedly see alongside a revamped 13.3-inch model:
- 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (with a 2.33GHz option).
- 2GB of memory.
- No optical drive.
- Mini DisplayPort, USB, and SD on the left, and MagSafe and another USB on the right.
- New, single-piece button trackpad, like on the Pros.
- Smaller footprint, but same thickness as the current MacBook Air.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see this thing unveiled this afternoon. My 12-inch PowerBook is long due for retirement. Tune in here at TheAppleBlog for coverage of today’s event, which starts at 10 AM Pacific, or 1 PM Eastern.

Update: As of 12:15 p.m. EDT this afternoon, the Discussions pages have all been yanked, showing a “not found” error. It’s likely they will reappear after this afternoon’s event, and apparent that someone really did jump the gun and posted them too soon.

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