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Apple Updates Java, ProKit, and Aperture Enhances iLife ’11 Compatibility

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Updates

Apple has released the following updates in order to support iLife ’11 more effectively: ProKit Update 6.0.1, and Aperture Update 3.1. In addition to those updates Apple has also release Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3 in order to better support ava SE 6 to 1.6.0_22.

The updates were made available earlier today. Just launch Software Update on your Mac to download and install these now.

Click the read link below for details on these new updates that were provided by Apple.

Just Bought A Mac? Get iLife ’11 For Just $7

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iLife '11 react

Crap! You just popped for a new MacBook Pro two weeks ago, and now Apple goes and releases the superfabulous iLife ’11, meaning you’ve gotta fork over another $49 for a copy (or $79 for the five-computer Family Pack), right?

Nope! Apple is letting recent Mac buyers upgrade from the previous version of iLife for $7, so long as they bought the Mac(s) on or after Oct. 1; same deal applies to anyone buying a Mac now or in the future without iLife ’11. Bummer: The $7 upgrade is only available online, so you’ll have to wait for it in the mail — or wince as you pay for a $49 copy from an Apple Store, if you’re in a hurry.

CultofMac Mockup v. Real MacBook Air [Spot the Difference]

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The real MacBook Air. Picture from Apple's website.
Our mockup, created by designer Dan Draper, on a description provided by a source. Published on Monday, two days before Apple revealed the new, top-secret device.

I hate to crow, I really do, but we nailed it on the MacBook Air rumors.

Just look at our mockup above, which we published on Monday, and the real deal. It’s pretty uncanny, especially as the designer, Don Draper, mocked it up based on a description from a source. Of course, Apple is very consistent with its design language, which makes things easier. We got the color of the screen bezel wrong and forgot to include the headphone jack. But still — just look at it.

We got most of the specs right too.

iLife ’11 Gets Heavy Dose of Creative Magic, Steals Today’s Show [Opinion]

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iLife '11 react

Despite a massive lion lurking in the background of the press invite for today’s event, the big news didn’t have much to do with OS X 10.7 (now officially “Lion”); instead, the big news was about the new MacBook Air pair, the Mac App Store, FaceTime for Mac — and iLife ’11

In fact, iLife almost stole the thunder from the later “one more thing” MacBook Air announcement. And for good reason: There’re some really impressive features included in this round of what is quite possibly the best software suite to ever come standard on a manufacturer’s entire product line.

FaceTime First Look: Simple and Ready to Takeover the World

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We’ve been playing around with the new beta release of FaceTime, and while it’s slim on features, we’re fairly pleased with the app considering it’s still in the beta phase. So far FaceTime for Mac is a simple replication of FaceTime from iOS, but it’s simplicity is what I like about it so far.

Behold! The Infinite FaceTime Loop!

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So this is what happens when you open FaceTime on your Mac, use it to call FaceTime on your iPhone, and then point the camera on one towards the camera on the other: infinite FaceTime!

Coming soon: infinite FaceTime inside infinite screensharing. Go on, I dare you.

This dream is collapsing. As long as we’ve got the timings right, we can ride the wake-ups all the way back to the real world.

Mac App Store: What Do Apple’s A-List Developers Think?

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So there’s going to be an App Store for the Mac, just like the App Store we’re all used to on iOS.

What do OS X developers think of this?

I got in touch with a bunch of devs to ask them what they make of it. Many of them are still reading through the official documentation, and some of the questions they ask below may well be answered there. But here are some of their very first impressions…

Cult of Mac Writers React To The New MacBook Air

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Buster Heine: The new MacBook Air has a nice wafting odor of sex coming from the design (except for the metal bezel), but the specs and pricing are a bit disappointing for me. I’m not a rich businessman on the go, so I don’t think I’m in the target demographic of the new MBAs.

From a practical standpoint, the 13-inch is irrelevant. I’m really attracted to that beautiful 11.6 inch unit with a $999 price point, but there’s no point in replacing my 13′ Macbook Pro for an underpowered machine that is a few pounds lighter.

The new Macbook Airs confuse me. They seem designed to be a secondary computer, but if I already have an iPad + keyboard, an iPhone, and a MacBook Pro, there’s no point in buying it because it can’t handle everything a MacBook Pro can, and it’s too expensive to be an amateur’s computer. If Apple can bring down the price on the new units I might be tempted, but for now I’ll be resisting the urge to buy the new Apple gear, no matter how sexy it looks.

Reader Poll: Can the New MacBook Air Replace MacBook Pros?

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[polldaddy poll=”3957905″]

Steve Jobs called it the “future of the MacBook” line, but are you ready to give up your MacBook Pro for these shiny newcomers?

The 11.6-inch starts at $999 for 64GB SSD space and the 13.3-inch starts at $1,299 for a 128GB hard drive, and jumps to $1,599 for a 256GB hard drive.

What’s better: thin and slim or the old workhorse?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Back to Mac: Meet The New 11.6 and 13.3 Inch MacBook Airs

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Steve Jobs has just come on stage with his “one more thing”… and as predicted, it’s a new MacBook Air, in both 11.6 and 13.3-inch versions.

Steve explains that with the new MacBook Air, they wanted to leverage the advantages of the iPad to a real laptop, including instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage, no movie parts and thin and light.

That’s the design philosophy that led to the new MacBook Air. It’s a completely unibody design, 0.11 inches thick at its thinnest, and 0.68 inches at its thickest. Overall, it’s 90% smaller and lighter, with completely silent operation.

The 13.3-incher is running 1440×900 pixels, which makes it a higher pixel density than even the 15-inch MacBook Pro. It features a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, a max of 2GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, a full size multitouch trackpad, one USB port, an SD card slot and a FaceTime camera.

It’s the battery life that astounds, though. It’s a holy crap moment: the new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will supposedly have a 30 day standby time and seven hours of wireless web usage. This thing is basically all battery inside.

The 11.6-inch is mostly the same specs, but has a woeful 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor, a smaller 1366×768 resolution and only 5 hours on wireless web… presumably because they had to shrink the battery packs.

So what’ll these cost? Well, the 11.6-inch starts at $999 for 64GB SSD space, while a bump to $1199 will double your storage. The 13.3-inch starts at $1299 for a 128GB hard drive, and jumps to $1599 for a 256GB hard drive.

Honestly? This is pretty underwhelming: even accounting for the major performance bumps you see when you go SSD, that’s a wimpy computer for the price. We’re not sure we’re sold. What do you think?

Back to Mac: Lion Coming Summer 2011, Mac App Store in 90 Days

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Steve Jobs has just announced the release date for OS X 10.7. It’ll be coming in summer of 2011.

But what about that new App Store? Do developers really have to wait almost a year for it? Nope. The Mac App Store will be released within Snow Leopard within the next ninety days, with App Submissions in November from developers.

That’s amazing. I wasn’t expecting the Mac App Store this generation of OS X, but here it is, coming down the pipe. I only wonder how worth using it’ll be without OS X 10.7 specific new features to make the most of apps within OS X.

Back to Mac: Launchpad is an iOS UI for OS X

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With OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple’s also bringing a new element to Macs: the Launchpad.

In launchpad, all of your apps neatly arranged in rows. Thinks stacks for app icons, but instead of flying out of your dock, they are neatly arranged — complete with pages — on your desktop. You can even create folders, just like in iOS.

Essentially, Launchpad is an iOS interface layer for OS X for apps. Just another way in which OS X is becoming more iOS-like.

Back to Mac: Meet the Mac App Store

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Apple is bringing the App Store to Macs, and while it won’t be the same as the iOS App Store, it’ll leverage some of their benefits.

It makes sense: there have been 7 billion downloads from the App Store, and Apple wants that money on the Mac side of things. According to Steve, it’ll be ““the best place to discover apps. It won’t be the only place, but be the best place.”

Apps will automatically install on the Mac app store, as well as updated, and will be licensed across all of your personal Macs.

Sounds like great news for app developers, and there’ll be the same 70/30 split. Let’s hope the approval process isn’t as absurd as it is on iOS.

Back to Mac: OS X 10.7 Lion is OS X Meets iOS

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Introducing what Steve humorously termed as the “entree for today,” Apple has just unveiled OS X 10.7, Lion, which they are, as rumored, describing as iOS meets OS X.

What are we getting? Multitouch gestures, an App Store, App Home Screens, full screen apps, auto save and apps that resume when launched… just like in iOS, although how much like in iOS remains to be seen.

First up, multitouch.

FaceTime Coming To Macs… Today

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FaceTime’s been a huge success on the iPhone and iPod Touch. You knew it was coming to the Mac, and guess what? Now it has.

Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller demonstrated the new functionality, calling between an iPhone 4 and a Mac. When Steve rotates his iPhone, it rotates on Phil’s computer as well. It even does fullscreen.

Wonder how long you’ll have to wait? Barely any time at all: Apple will be releasing FaceTime for Mac in beta form today.

[image via Gizmodo]

iLife ’11 Available Today for $49

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iLife ’11 has made its showing, and it’s plenty impressive between the substantial improvements to iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. But when it’ll be available?

Well, now. If you buy a new Mac today, it’ll be free, as always. Got an existing Mac? It’ll cost $49.

Expect to see our reviews as soon as we can get our grubby hands on it.

Back to Mac: iPhoto ’11 Is Here And It’s The Prettiest And Most Full Feature iPhoto Yet

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Steve Jobs has just taken things back from Tim Cook, and now he’s announcing the first new product of the Back to Mac event. As predicted, it’s iLife ’11.

“I’d like to talk about iLife. It’s widely regarded as the best suite of digital lifestyle apps in the world. You can’t do this on any other computer. We improve it every year or two, coming out with new version.”

First up, he details the changes to iPhoto, which is gaining vastly expanded fullscreen support, as well as gobs of Facebook enhancements, easier emailing functionality and some new slideshows. There’s more though… and it only gets more impressive as the presentation goes on.

Back to Mac: Over 600,000 Developers on Mac

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Now Tim Cook is talking a bit about the vibrant development side of things when it comes to the Mac.

“Now, with the share rising and the units rising much faster than the industry, we have a very vibrant dev community. We have 600k registered Mac devs. They’re growing at 30k per month,” he says.

Cook calls out game developers specifically, an area OS X has always been weak in, largely due to bad driver support.

“We have new devs like Valve. They’re bringing titles simultaneously to the Mac and PC. Like Half Life. This is great for the Mac, and a great shot in the arm for gaming on Macs.”

Even Microsoft is making money developing for the Mac. AutoCAD’s also coming back. OS X isn’t going anywhere.

Back to Mac: OS X is $22 Billion Industry

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As is his wont, and despite his appearance at an earnings call earlier this week, Apple is starting off the Back to Mac event with some earnings, this time putting the Mac business in context.

Last year, the Mac side of Apple’s empire account for $22 billion, or 33% of their revenue. So Mac is still big business for Apple, despite iOS’ huge success.

“To put this in some context, the mac company, if it were standalone… and we have no plans to do that… would be #110 on the Fortune 500.”

Apple is making three times what they did on OS X five years ago. They have 50 million users world wide. One in five PCs sold at retail is over 20%, and last quarter, the Mac grew two and a half fold.

That’s a lot of Macs sold. OS X might be second tier to iOS right now, but it’s still huge business.

Back to Mac Liveblog: Steve Jobs Comes On Stage

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With his usual fanfare, Steve Jobs has just strutted onto the stage at Apple’s own Cupertino headquarters for today’s Back to the Mac event.

Steve’s looking confident, and he has every reason to be with $50 billion in the bank. The big question is, what will Apple be announcing today to add to the corporate coffers? iLife ’11 and OS X 10.7 are definites, as is a new MacBook Air… but could we also see a Verizon iPhone, refreshed MacBooks and maybe the slam dunk of a totally new product that Apple has somehow managed to keep completely secret by the end of the next hour and a half?

Place your bets in the comments, but best do it quick: Steve’s about to open his mouth, and that’s when the bets begin to close, one by one.

[image via Engadget]

PostworkShop: Professional Post-Production Photo Effects Software for Mac [Review]

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Professional post-production photo effects software complete with hundreds of detailed, fine-grained controls to create virtually unlimited artistic styles for under a hundred bucks?

No way, you say.

Way.

PostworkShop is software from Xycod, a small Hungarian company that has built creative artists — of whom a number use Macs, apparently — a tool that so exceeds its cost in value, it’s nearly as breathtaking as some of the work it can be used to create.