APPLE'S FINAL CUT PRO X LAUNCHED

Just as promised, Apple's long-awaited Final Cut Pro X is now available on the Mac App Store for just $299.99, meaning keen editors can immediately grab hold of this suite to crack on with some real-time 4K video editing. Of course, this is assuming that you have a 64-bit Mac rig with beastly specs in the first place.

Accompanying this major software release are Motion 5 and Compressor 4 kits, both of which will cost you an extra $49.99 each, so make that roughly around $400 for the full monty.

Apple has confirmed there will not be a boxed version, upgrade pricing, or "Express" version available. Individual users can purchase a single license to use on multiple machines that they own, while business users will need to purchase one license per machine. Volume education pricing is available for purchase by institutions only.

LEAK: APPLE BACK-TO-SCHOOL SALE STARTS TODAY, JUNE 16

Rumors for Apple’s back-to-school deal have been floating around since before WWDC 2011, and now new evidence seems to confirm that the promotion will kick off TODAY.

MacRumors was able to get a photo of Apple’s marketing material for the promotion indicating that the sale would start June 16 and run through September 20. Also, instead of the rumored $200 off an iPad with the purchase of a Mac, the offer is for a $100 Mac App Store gift card that can also be used for purchases from the iTunes Store. In previous years, a free iPod was offered instead.

This new offer makes a lot of sense considering all the updates coming with Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and the iCloud. The Mac App Store will be built-in to Lion, and the iCloud will make it super easy to sync apps and music purchased through iTunes.

MAC OS X LION COMING IN JULY

Apple announced that the next major update to Mac OS X, Lion 10.7, will be available for purchase and download exclusively through the Mac App Store in July for just $29. OS X 10.7 Lion features over 250 new updates to the OS including Mission Control, Launchpad, full-screen apps, Auto Save, Resume, and much more.

Press Release:

Mac OS X Lion With 250 New Features Available in July From Mac App Store

SAN FRANCISCO—June 6, 2011—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs, will be available to customers in July as a download from the Mac® App Store™ for $29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch® gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

“The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The best version of OS X yet, Lion is packed with innovative features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, and Mission Control for instantly accessing everything running on your Mac.”

New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations built into Lion let you interact directly with content on the screen for a more intuitive way to use your Mac. New gestures include momentum scrolling, tapping or pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, and swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps. All Mac notebooks ship with Multi-Touch trackpads and desktop Macs can use Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

Full screen apps take advantage of the entire display and are perfect for reading email, surfing the web or browsing photos, especially on a MacBook Air® or MacBook® Pro. With a single click your app fills the display and you can swipe from one window to another, between full screen apps, or back to your Desktop, Dashboard or Spaces® without ever leaving full screen. iWork® and iLife® apps, as well as Safari®, iTunes®, Mail, FaceTime® and others, all take advantage of Lion’s system-wide support for full screen apps.

Mission Control combines Exposé®, full screen apps, Dashboard and Spaces into one unified experience for a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps and your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a tap.

The Mac App Store is built into Lion and is the best place to discover great new Mac apps, buy them with your iTunes account, download and install them. Apps automatically install directly to Launchpad, and with Lion’s release, the Mac App Store will be able to deliver smaller “delta” app updates and new apps that can take advantage of features like In-App Purchase and Push Notifications.

Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With a single Multi-Touch gesture, all your Mac apps are displayed in a stunning full screen layout. You can organize apps in any order or into folders and swipe through unlimited pages of apps to find the one you want.

Lion includes a completely redesigned Mail app with an elegant widescreen layout. The new Conversations feature groups related messages into an easily scrollable timeline, intelligently hiding repeated text so the conversation is easy to follow, and retaining graphics and attachments as they were originally sent. An incredibly powerful new search feature allows you to refine your search and suggests matches by person, subject and label as you type. Mail includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Additional new features in Lion include:

Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions; and
AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.
Pricing & Availability Mac OS X Lion will be available in July as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard® from the Mac App Store for $29.99 (US). Lion will be the easiest OS X upgrade and at about 4GB, it is the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store®. Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US).

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. The Lion upgrade can be installed on all your authorized personal Macs.

The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make a request.

APPLE POSTS RECORD $26.74 BILLION IN REVENUE

As expected Apple released its fiscal first quarter results and the news was very good. The financial results cover the fiscal first quarter of 2011 which ended on December 25th last year. Revenue was at an all time high with Apple’s highly popular devices and associated App Stores making up the bulk of the $26.74 billion generated. Net quarterly profit was $6 billion.

Compared to the same quarter last year it’s a massive gain. Revenue has increased over $11 billion ($15.68 billion in the year-ago quarter), and profit has increased by $2.62 billion ($3.38 billion in the year-ago quarter).

Steve Jobs is always looking to the future, and simply commented:

We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.

Here’s a breakdown of the devices Apple sold during the quarter (percentage gains are on the year-ago quarter):

• Mac: 4.13 million (23% increase)
• iPhone: 16.24 million (86% increase)
• iPod: 19.45 million (7% decline)
• iPad: 7.33 million

We also can’t forget the 30% cut Apple takes on every app sale in the App Store, as well as the profit generated from sales of content on iTunes away from apps. With the Mac App Store recently coming online that area of revenue stream will only grow in the future.

APPLE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCED MAC APP STORE LAUNCH DATE

Apple has finally officially announced the date the Mac App Store will launch. Be at your computer on January 6, 2011 to get all that Apple app goodness. Unfortunately, you will need to be running Snow Leopard to get access.

The App Store will have "paid and free apps in categories like Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities." So mark your calendar and get up extra early to grab those goodies! [Apple]

RUMOR: MAC APP STORE LAUNCHING DECEMBER 13TH

It is no secret the Mac App Store is coming and coming soon. Steve Jobs said it was coming within 90 days, when the iOS App Store was announced on October 20th, which takes it up to mid-January 2011.

According to AppleTell, an "inside source" claiming that Apple is trying to launch the Mac App Store before Christmas, specifically targeting December 13th while telling developers to have their software ready by Monday, December 6th. Unfortunately, the Mac App Store also requires an OS update to end users to which MacRumors reminds us that the new OS X 10.6.6 has already been seeded to developers. So yeah, that's a pretty aggressive timeline if true and could possibly be kicked off by a press event that would also birth Apple's rumored recurring subscription billing model in support of Rupert Murdoch's The Daily digital newspaper. [Gizmodo]