New Apple products announced at Summer Press Conference
Apple’s Summer Press Conference reveals a set of new products:
New iMac
A new iMac, in aluminum and glass. Much like the mock-ups that were floating around the Internet. 2 screen sizes: 20 and 24 inch displays. Also, new keyboard: 2 USB ports, 1/3 of an inch high, wireless? Bluetooth 2.0. Not sure, but the mouse is probably new and wireless as well.
20” model comes with 2.0GHz or 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, 24” with 2.4GHz Core 2 Extreme. ATI Radeon HD graphics card (ouch), 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0, up to 4GB memory, up to 1TB of hard drive. 20” 2.0GHz for $1199, 20” 2.4GHz $1499, and 24” 2.4GHz $1799.
UPDATE: There is a 4th model listed on the iMac product page, a 24” 2.8GHz with 2GB memory and a 500GB harddisk for $2299.
UPDATE 2: the wireless keyboard and mouse are options, $30 (extra) for the keyboard, $20 for the mouse.
iLife ‘08
iLife ‘08 consists of iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand.
- iPhoto
iPhoto has a new option, “Events”. This groups albums, so it minimizes the number of albums you’ll have to browse through. Options to hide photos and see only the ones you like, “smart” albums (e.g. 3 stars and above). - .Mac
.Mac will be integrated with iPhoto, producing .Mac Web Gallery. Also, the iPhone has added “Send to Web Gallery”. Basically the same idea as iPhoto ‘08, integrating the iPhone with .Mac. It’s easy for others to be able to submit photo’s to your .Mac Web Gallery, and these submissions will be auto downloaded to your iPhone. Also increased the storage capacity from 1GB to 10GB, priced at $99.95 a year. - iMovie
iMovie ‘08 is a complete rewrite. The idea is to make the creation of movies really, really fast. The idea of a video library with the same scrolling as the photo albums. Very easy editing and building of movies. Plus, it’s simple to make a version for iTunes, put it on your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV. Options to encode your movies in multiple resolutions. - iWeb
Integration with other web services: Google Maps, Google AdSense. Media index feature, where the photos of your site are easily indexed. Support for personal domains, and new themes. - iDVD
For those people who don’t want to send a huge file across the Internet, there’s the option to make DVDs. New themes have been added and pro encoding for higher quality. - GarageBand
Two versions included, GarageBand for regular multi-take recording, and Magic GarageBand for playing with a virtual band.
iWork ‘08
iWork ‘08 consists of Keynote, Pages, and the newcomer, Numbers.
- Keynote
Keynote ‘08 includes new text effects and new transitions. Also new is Instant Alpha: grab a photo, take out the background, keep the part that you want, and include it in your presentation. Smart Builds lets you automatically generate animations from pictures that you drag into it. - Pages
Pages ‘08 adds a new mode: apart from the page layout mode, there’s now a new word processing mode. There is built-in change tracking, and it’s compatible with Word. Pages ‘08 comes with 140 built-in templates. - Numbers
New in iWorks ‘08 is Numbers, “a spreadsheet for the rest of us”. Done in the style of Pages, your spreadsheets are basically layed-out on the page. It includes intelligent tables, readable formulas, simple sorting and reformatting without affecting other parts of your spreadsheets. It can also import from or export to Excel.
Q&A session
There is a Q&A session with Steve Jobs, Tim Cook (COO) and Phil Schiller (EVP Product Marketing). During this Q&A the following nuggets are revealed:
- The new iMacs are noticeably thinner, not just the keyboard, but also the computer.
- The Mac Mini gets a refresher today as well.
- There is Apple TV news coming, just not today (today is a Mac day).