Steve Jobs unveiled the new iMac line to a gathering of a few hundred journalists today at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. That came as no surprise. Still, seeing the new iMacs in person was much more impressive than just hearing the rumors.

 

To confirm: Yes, they're housed in an aluminum case that, at about 1 inch, is "appreciably" thinner than the plastic case on previous iMacs. (Oddly, we could not get Apple to give us exact measurements - when asked directly during the Q&A session at the end, Steve demurred and said, "You'll be able to see it for yourself and measure it in the hands-on session right after this." OK, right, well we had neglected to bring our tape measure.) Yes, they come with two brand-new ultra-thin keyboards: a wired keyboard, which is just a third of an inch at its lowest point, with a bit less key travel than the previous Apple keyboard but a lot more style and a bit less tap-a-tap-tap noise, and a wireless keyboard that's more compact than its wired cousin but offers almost as many keys (ditching the number 10-key pad). Yes, Apple has discontinued the 17-incher, offering the new iMac line in two 20-inch models and one 24-inch inch model.

 

The 24-inch iMac is HUGE. In a good way.

 

A few new details that the media hadn't thought to speculate on: The ultra-bright LCD screen is glossy, fully encased in glass. It's the same glossy screen you'll find offered in the MacBook notebook line, in fact. That, plus a black border around the display area, makes images and video literally pop on the iMac's screen - although the jury is out on whether users could run into severe problems with glare.

 

The new iMac line's pricing is the same or - in the case of the 24-inch model - cheaper than that of the old line. The three price tiers start at $1,199 for a 20-inch iMac with a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, $1,499 for a 20-incher with a 2.4GHz processor, and $1,799 for a 24-incher with 2.4GHz processor (but, obviously, more storage and memory than the 20-incher with the same processor).

 

In addition to its sleek new form factor, the iMac keyboards have new buttons, including tiny buttons in the upper left to brighten or dim the display, jump to Expose settings, or launch Dashboard. In the upper right, there are media control keys (play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, etc.) that work automatically with iTunes, iMovie, QuickTime, and other apps. The wired keyboard sports two - count 'em! - USB 2.0 ports as well.

 

In a 30-second test drive of the new iMac keyboard, we discovered that it felt quite natural to type, despite the shorter key travel than Apple's standard keyboard. See the two new keyboards side by side on Apple's website.

 

Expansion addicts will appreciate the iMac's new ports: FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet. And, as you might expect from Apple - which is hell-bent on reducing the tangle of cables that usually protrudes from a typical computer setup - 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 are built-in as well. You've also got a built-in, slot-loading SuperDrive - although we counted the number of times Steve repeated the prediction that "people won't be burning DVDs anymore" so it's almost surprising that Apple deigned to include it. As for the geekier specs, the 24-inch iMac can accommodate an up to 1TB hard drive, and all models can take up to 4GB of RAM. The iMac line now features the ATI Radeon HD graphics processor, and any iMac model allows you to connect a second display.

 

More: And that's not all - iLife and iWork '08 have arrived...

 

 

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Of course, iMacs weren't the end of the story today. Although he didn't say, "And one more thing…" Steve did had a couple more things up his sleeve once he'd introduced the thinner, prettier iMacs: iLife and iWork '08.

 

We'll admit, we assumed the update to the iApps suites wouldn't appear until October's Leopard release. We're perfectly happy to admit that we were wrong. Especially since we can't wait to get our hands on two new iLife apps in particular: iPhoto '08 and iMovie '08, which has been totally redesigned and bears very little resemblance to the version of iMovie you probably have on your Mac today.

 

Out of the gate, a cool new feature available in both iPhoto and iMovie is something apple calls "skimming." Essentially, this lets you place your cursor over a collection of photos to see a quick run-through of the photos in that collection. In iMovie, you can skim a video clip in the thumbnail view simply by dragging the mouse over it - a way to find sequences in captured video that is much faster than just pressing play. The highlight of the iPhoto update is a better way to find and organize your photos, based around events.

 

Every time you add new photos to iPhoto, instead of naming the group of images "Roll 10," or "Roll 581," iMovie will create a new event and date it. You can then go and give the event a custom name like "Joe and Maria's Wedding" or "Family Reunion Summer 07." If you've shot multiple events on the same date, you can easily split events into two, and, conversely, merge them if you want to keep all shots from a long weekend or a multi-day vacation together. Another handy new feature is Hide, which lets you hide images you don't quite want to delete but that you'd rather not have clutter up the view in any given Event.

 

This is the Events view in iPhoto '08. Look at all the photos of cute kids and fun activities Steve has on his iMac!

 

We were also looking forward to the hands-on session after Steve's presentation, to learn more about iPhoto's "powerful new editing tools." But when we asked one of the Apple demonstrators to show us, she didn't seem quite prepared for that question. She navigated to the edit window, at least, where we saw that there's more than just red-eye reduction in the new iPhoto. You've got better cropping, some advanced photo enhancement and effects, and even new shadow and highlight controls - all welcome additions. (Although, among lower-end photo editors, it's still no match for Adobe Photoshop Elements; however, we'll probably make do with iPhoto '08 until Adobe releases Elements 5.0 for the Mac...someday.)

 

We like the way iPhoto's editing window looks like Aperture. It makes a non-pro editor feel, well, like a pro.

 

The reason Apple redesigned iMovie from the ground up was, apparently, a happy accident. A video engineer went on vacation to the Grand Caymans and, upon his return, wanted to throw together a quick, short video in iMovie HD with highlights from his trip. Several hours later, and with nothing to show for it, he had decided, instead, to develop an app that would allow him to create high-quality video in 30 minutes or less. And iMovie '08 was born.

 

Speaking for the non-video-editors on staff, we're genuinely excited about getting our hands on iMovie '08. Steve always makes iLife and iWork apps look super-simple in his demos, but iMovie truly seems as easy to use as he makes it out to be. But simple doesn't mean dumbed down - nor does it mean that you'll get an amateurish result. In addition to making it a breeze to grab video clips from multiple files and combine them in one movie, iMovie '08 can import video in a range of current formats, including AVCHD, HDV, and DV camcorders, as well as from digital cameras that have movie capabilities.

 

iMovie's skimming feature in action (see the action blur??). Seriously, though, see the clip bordered in red? The tiny vertical line is showing you where you are in the clip.

 

.Mac members will enjoy some new perks as well, namely in the form of the .Mac Web Gallery. In both iPhoto and iMovie, it's now brainlessly easy to upload photos or movies to share with anyone online: You just click a button. You can, of course, specify what type of sharing you want to do, and in the case of photos, you can also allow visitors to download print-quality versions of your pictures (hurrah!) and even upload their own photos from the same event to add to your gallery. For movies, visitors have the choice of viewing them in small, medium, or large format, which is going to be a somewhat large file, of course, but is better than DVD quality. (This is where Steve mentioned that we won't be making DVDs to send to Grandma anymore...which he could be right about, as long as Grandma has a better-than-dialup Net connection at home.) Best of all, the Web Gallery is gorgeous - and you can take credit for it.

 

GarageBand '08 features a slick new capability that will be music to the ears of novice producers and parents of music-loving children who, up until now, probably couldn't work in the app without a lot of hand-holding. The feature, called Magic GarageBand, is, as Steve put it, "a way in" to GarageBand for people who might be intimidated by its standard interface. Essentially, when you choose Magic GarageBand, you get an animated stage with icons for various types of music. Click on one and an instrumental track begins to play. You then "edit" the track by clicking on the various instruments and selecting different options than the defaults, which instantly change in real time.

 

This is what Magic GarageBand looks like. When you click on any instrument while a track is playing, you can select different versions of it to create different sounds.

 

iWeb '08 has a cool live Web widgets feature, which lets you add a host of cool tidbits to your site, including Google Maps, Google AdSense (attention bloggers - you can make money from your website if you're not already doing so!), and the ability to use HTML snippets from any site, including YouTube (granted you're not infringing on copyright, of course).

 

In truth, there are almost too many new features in iLife '08 to cover them all here - so be sure to watch for more detailed first looks at all the iLife apps, as well as comprehensive reviews in the November 2007 issue of Mac|Life, and, of course, here on MacLife.com. iLife '08 comes free on all new Macs, and can be purchased for $79. It's fully compatible with Mac OS X Tiger, and will work with Leopard as well.

 

But wait, there's even more...iWork '08!

 

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And, finally, there is just one more thing: an upgrade to iWork '08, which also got a new spreadsheet app called Numbers. Super-duper Excel nerds will no doubt scoff at Numbers, but for those who really just want essential spreadsheet features enhanced with consumer-friendly, good-looking graphical capabilities, Numbers will come a welcome alternative to the buttoned-down Excel. (Granted, super-duper Excel nerds have a right to scoff at Numbers, which doesn't support Excel macros, although it does support the .xls file format.) As you'd expect from the company that developed Keynote, Numbers' graphics and charting skills are focused on the quality of the graphics - breath of fresh air if you're used to the old-school look and feel of PowerPoint's charts and graphs.

 

Numbers lets you view (and print) multiple sheets on the same canvas. And you can add graphics too.

 

Keynote '08 introduces a feature called Smart Builds, which lets you create photo animations instantly. Imagine, for example, a 3D cube with photos on each side, or a "carousel" effect where your photos spin around and stop for a moment so viewers can see each one. A new A-to-B Animations feature lets you create professional-grade animations that allow clip art or photos to move on a slide. And an Instant Alpha feature lets you outline prominent elements in a photo - such as a car against a backdrop of a car lot, or a flower on a backdrop of greenery - to use it as a piece of clip art in a presentation.

 

Steve showed us this slide to illustrate A-to-B Animations, which lets you create movement on your slides without having to learn any animation skills.

 

And, finally, there's Pages '08, which is going to be easier to adopt for those who just need a high-quality word processor (rather than a page-layout-focused app). Capabilities you're used to in MS Word, like change tracking and contextual format bars, are now part of Pages, which is much more design-savvy than Word has ever been.

 

iWork '08 is not free with a Mac purchase - the package costs $79. But if you consider the price of MS Office, it's certainly qualifies as a bargain.