LATEST OS FOR MACBOOK

 
                                                
The new Mac operating system, called Mac OS X Lion, will be available in the summer of 2011, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive officer (CEO), told a press conference held at the company's headquarters.

As the eighth major release of Apple's Mac operating system, Mac OS X Lion includes new features such as App Store, which helps users purchase applications using their iTunes accounts and download and install in just one step, similar to that on the iPad tablet computer launched by Apple earlier this year.

The Mac App Store is expected to be available for Snow Leopard, Apple's current Mac OS X operating system, within 90 days and will be included in Lion when it ships next summer.

Apple also announced that it is adding FaceTime video call feature to its Mac computers. The application, debuted on Apple's iPhone 4, will allow Mac users to video-chat with each other as well as with iPhone 4 and iPod touch users.

"We've sold more than 19 million FaceTime-ready iPhone 4 and iPod touch devices in the past four months, and now those users can make FaceTime calls with tens of millions of Mac users," Apple CEO Jobs said.

In another indication of how Apple is bringing inspirations from iPhone and iPad to its Mac products, the company introduced new MacBook Air notebooks that replace hard drives with solid state flash storage technology used in iPad.

"MacBook Air is the first of a new generation of notebooks that leaves behind mechanical rotating storage in favor of solid state flash storage," Jobs said in a statement.

"We've taken what we have learned with the iPad -- solid state storage, instant-on, amazing battery standby time, miniaturization and lightweight construction, to create the new MacBook Air. With its amazing responsiveness and mobility, it will change the way we think about notebooks," the Apple CEO noted.

With its aluminum unibody enclosure, the new MacBook Air measures 0.68 inches (1.73 cm) at the thickest point and 0.11 inches (0.28 cm) at the thinnest point, weighing just 2.3 pounds ( 1.0 kg) for the 11.6-inch model and 2.9 pounds (1.3 kg) for the 13. 3inch model.

The new MacBook Air starts at 999 US dollars with the 11.6- inch model and is priced as high as 1,599 dollars for a 13.3inch model that has 256GB of flash storage. Apple said the new notebooks went on sales on Wednesday.

Despite the popularity of iPhone and iPad, Mac computers remain a steady source of revenue for Apple, which on Monday posted record quarterly sales of over 20 billion dollars.

Apple reported that it sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter ended on Sept. 25, up 27 percent over the same period a year earlier. Macs accounted for about a quarter of the company's revenue in the quarter.

Latest numbers from research firm IDC showed that Apple became the third-largest personal computer seller in the United States in the third quarter behind Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Dell with a market share of 10.6 percent.                 

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