MAC ANNOUNCEMENTS LIVE (AND THEN A SUMMARY)

MAC Announcements were streaming live on http://www.apple.com/

Here's a quick summary:

1 - There are new MAC notebooks. 13" and 11" Fairly high resolution screens. Very slim. Very light. All solid state storage. Long battery life. Approx $1,000-$1,600. Up to 256 GB storage. 2G memory.

2 - OS X Lion imports features from iPad & iPhone, including Facetime, multitouch gestures on the trackpad, full screen apps, and various navigation features. Coming Summer 2011.

3 -- New App store for MAC apps.

4 -- There are improvements in iLife, including better audio editing for iMovie. New iLife is free with new MACs; $49 to upgrade. Most of the new features in iPhoto and iMovie are new ways of automating simple tasks. The question is whether they improve the ways of doing more customized projects. Also possibly "dangerous" : Can automation force activities you do not want to happen (such as accidently and automatically importing pix or clips you do not want in a particular place on the computer).