Steve Jobs has just finished his presentation and announced new “aluminum and glass” iMacs, iLife 08, iWork 08 now including a spreadsheet application, and improvements to .Mac. Updates to the Mac mini (faster processor) and the new Airport Extreme (upgraded to Gigabit ethernet.)
Here are the details:
iMacs
- New “aluminum & glass” design with black screen bezel.
- 20″ and 24″ displays (no more 17″)
- New aluminum keyboard with dedicated keys for Expose and other functions.
- 3 x USB 2.0, 1 x Firewire 400, 1 x Firewire 800, gigabit ethernet, audio in/out connectors
- Three models: 20″ $1199, $1499 and 24″ $1799
- Available NOW
Mac mini
- Contrary to rumors, the Mac mini is still alive
- Faster processors
- Available NOW
iLife 08
- iPhoto: Events, hide photos, photo galleries, more book/calendar options
- iMovie: rewritten from scratch, iPhoto-like movie management, “make a movie in 30 minutes”
- iWeb: live web widgets (Google maps, adsense), index page, personal domain support
- iDVD: pro encoding, more themes
- GarageBand: “Magic GarageBand” for non-musicians, 24 bit audio, multi-take recording, etc.
- Requires 10.4 (Tiger) or later
- Available NOW for $79 (free w/new Macs)
.Mac
- Basic storage upped from 1GB top 10GB
- Data transfer upped from 10GB/month to 100GB/month
- Attachment size limit increased to 20MB (not sure of the previous)
- YOU CAN (FINALLY) HOST YOUR OWN DOMAINS ON .Mac!!
- Still $99/year
iWork 08
- Pages: separate word processing/page layout modes, contextual format bar
- Keynote: new text effects, new transitions, “Instant Alpha”, new themes
- Numbers: Apple’s new spreadsheet “for the rest of us”
- Requires 10.4 (Tiger) or later
- Available NOW for $79
Engadget has an excellent recap of today’s event with pictures at:
Steaming video of the event is available here:
What do you think of today’s announcements?
Comments / Trackbacks
New iMacs look great and new iLife/iWork look great too. I’ll be ordering the new software ASAP - maybe even run to the Apple Store to get mine before Friday night. New iMac will have to wait for a while but it’s on my wish list.
Forgot to say the new wireless keyboard is disappointing. I like the numeric keypad, etc.
I’m probably going to get a 24″ iMac soon before a developer discount expires (Dual G5 tower with 20″ Apple Display available if anyone’s interested.)
I suspect the wireless keyboard is targeted for home media center users as much as anything else (will be interesting to see if AppleTV gets an update to support it!) I’ve never been a fan of wireless keyboard anyway so that’s not an issue for me.
Just got iLife and iWork 08. I’ve only taken a quick look at each but already there are two changes in Pages that I really wanted and I haven’t even tried to do a document.
The iPhoto events feature is way better than I expected it to be and very handy. The skimming technique is terrific too!