Apple updates Macbook Air, reports record earnings, updates OS X

Added by Erik West on July 21, 2011

Apple announced the availability of an updated Macbook Air, just a day after the company surprised investors with a record quarterly profit of $7.3bn.

The new Macbook Air features updates to all aspects including its processor – the Mabook Air now uses Intel i5 processor, or consumers can update to the faster i7 processor when they configure the notebook on Apple’s web site. The Macbook Air, starting at $999, has a battery life of up to seven hours and has no moving parts, thanks to the SSD drive that’s standard in all models.

Apple’s update to the Macbook comes a day after the company reported record quarterly sales in revenue. The company reported they sold more than 20m iPhones, over 9m iPads, and over 3.9m Macs. As iPad and iPhone sales increased over 140 percent year-over-year, iPod sales declined 20 percent to just over 7.5m units. The decline in iPod sales was anticipated as consumers consolidate their smart-phones and music players by purchasing devices like the iPhone.

Outside of hardware and earnings, Apple also released an upgrade to its computer operating system, Mac OS X. The latest version, called Lion, represents a shift towards merging the user experience between personal computers, and devices like the iPad and iPhone. The update to the operating system is the first to be offered via Apple’s App Store for $29.99; previous updates were provided on DVD to facilitate recovery. The new operating system features online recovery options. For those that cannot wait to download the 3.7Gb update, Apple offers the update on a flash drive for $69.99.

“Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically”, said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.